By Beth Buczynski
A very good friend recently confessed to me that sometimes her subconscious sugar cravings are so powerful, she gets out of bed in the middle of the night to eat sweets.
This is what sugar—dubbed “sweet poison” by NY Daily News—does to us. We’ve become a generation of zombies that seek sugar at any cost, even if it means interrupted sleep, expanding waistlines and poor emotional health. The worst part is, we don’t even realize it’s happening.
Cookies and candy get a lot of criticism, but at least these sugary foods are honest about what they contain. The real danger lies in foods that hide their sugary nature behind fancy monikers and mile-long ingredient lists.
These hidden sugars make it possible for the average American to consume 152 pounds of sugar each year, despite filling their grocery carts with savory staples and so-called health foods. Once ingested, sugar affects the brain almost exactly like another powdery white substance we know and fear—cocaine—triggering an intense addiction that compels us to seek more.
The first step to getting off the sugar addiction roller coaster is exposing hidden sugar. There are literally thousands of foods that conceal this sweet poison behind savory labels, but these 10 are the worst and most surprising.
Note: this list refers to the conventional and store brands many of us buy. Different rules apply to organic, artisan and homemade varieties.
A Sweetener by Any Other Name
The morals of this story are: Always read the label and avoid processed foods at all cost. However, even if you do these things, sugar can still sneak in. That’s because it’s not always called sugar.
Check out this helpful post to learn how to spot other names for sugar on food labels.
This article was reposted with permission from our media associate Care2.