Beware of “Healthy” Snacks

By Natalie Moore Posted April 23, 2016

• Stealthy snack makers are hiding sugar everywhere! Find out how…
• Don’t get fooled! Be sure to check for this unhealthy ingredient.
• Fresh is always best! 

Dear Reader,

To follow up on yesterday’s article on the health effects of sugar, today I will show you an example of how sugar often goes by different names — including “not refined.”

Often, processed foods that are marketed as “healthy” have well-hidden sources of sugar. These types of sugar are just as threatening to your health as the clearly marked ones. Don’t be fooled by their cleverly disguised names.

Take these “paleo friendly” dried strawberries I found while on the road, for example:

No refined sugar clearly doesn’t mean low sugar in this case.

As you can clearly see, they contain two ingredients… wait… shouldn’t dried strawberries be just strawberries?

Instead, there is an extra ingredient — sugar. Sugar thinly veiled as apple juice concentrate — and lots of it.

For the same-size serving, fresh strawberries contain around 1 gram of sugar — a tiny fraction in comparison to these fructose-soaked tidbits.

And even though fruits dried without added ingredients  do contain a higher level of sugar than fresh fruits (due to dehydration increasing the sugar concentration), the same serving size of dried strawberries would still have less sugar, at around 16 grams.

While this brand can tout “no refined sugars” on their label, they are still selling you nothing more than strawberry candy.

So the lesson here is to look before you eat.

Even if you see an item labeled as a health item, chances are it’s got some type of sugar source. Look at the ingredients. If it contains any type of juice concentrate or fruit sugar — for instance, apple juice concentrate or grape sugar — you should pass.

Instead, opt for the fruit in its fresh state.

Live well,

Natalie Moore
Managing editor, Living Well Daily

Written By Natalie Moore

Natalie Moore is a dedicated health researcher with a passion for finding healthy, natural, and science-based solutions. After a decade of direct healthcare experience in western and natural medicine, she was involved in public health research before joining Living Well Daily.

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