Sugar vs. added sugar

[Warpy]

1. Well, the nutritional labels are your friends

and the processors are really good at adding a ton of sugar to a lot of things you wouldn't expect it to be in, like canned sauces, soups and stews.

Basically count the number of things with an -ose suffix and see how high up they are on the label. Higher up means there is more of it.

A little added sugar, when you control it yourself, can tame a sour tomato sauce or give that something that was missing in a soup or stew. The Chinese use sugar as a flavoring in a lot of savory recipes but don't have much of a sweet tooth for pastries and candy, although that's changing with the introduction of things like soft drinks. Added sugar is not all bad, nor is it all created equally.

Manufacturers don't cook like you do, though. They want their stuff to taste good up to a year after it's canned or frozen and that takes a ton of sugar and salt.

Sugar is not poison and neither is salt. They're just things in our diets that need to be controlled and that means less processed food.