Breakfast cereals and ready-made sauces are great sugar bombs

Cereals, Ready-made Sauces and Co: So much sugar is in the products
Overweight, diabetes, tooth decay: The frequent consumption of sugar carries a lot of health risks. For many foods, however, it is often not easy to see how much of the sweetener is in it. Hidden sugar is contained in numerous foods. The Stiftung Warentest now presents some of the sugar bombs - and points out how they can be defused.

High sugar consumption makes you sick
Time and again, health experts warn: Avoid high sugar intake. The sweetener can lead to enormous health problems such as tooth decay, obesity, hypertension or diabetes if consumed frequently. Nevertheless, a German consumes an average of 29 sugar cubes per day. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers only about half tolerable.

Many finished products often contain large amounts of sugar. Stiftung Warentest now points out various sugar bombs and explains how to defuse them. (Image: Sebastian Studio / fotolia.com)

Hidden sugar in finished products
Consumers only pour about one-eighth of this sugar into coffee, cake and pudding, but they do not see the vast majority of sweets. For many finished products sugar is added, which is often not easy for consumers to discover.

Stiftung Warentest has looked at 60 sweetened ready-to-eat foods from the breakfast cereals, dairy products, ready-made sauces and soft drinks as an example and presents the results in its current magazine "test" (issue 5/2017).

Among other things, the experts had a closer look at 15 breakfast cereals. These often look like healthy cereal food due to the images of ears of corn and advertising with whole grains.

Advertising aimed at children
But far from it. Especially these children appealing products - in some cases with funny cartoon characters on the pack - contain large amounts of sugar.

"A sugar bomb is Kellog's Smacks with 43 percent. If a primary school student eats 60 grams, he already has more sugar in his body than ideally recommends WHO for the whole day, "the experts report on their website.

The testers point to a better alternative: a self-mixed muesli made from oatmeal and dried fruit, which also contains a lot of fructose, but scores with valuable fiber. In addition, cereals and cereals are also available without added sugar.

Better to resort to natural dairy products
Dairy products such as yoghurt also often do not come out without added sugar. Of the 15 products studied, many contained four cubes of sugar per cup. Natural sugar from the milk and fruits was already eliminated.

A few years ago, a study by the University of Hohenheim also found that many fruit yoghurts are big sugar bombs.

The Stiftung Warentest has a tip ready: "Eat dairy products as naturally as possible." Refine the yoghurts with a little jam or even better with nuts and fruit.

Three pieces of sugar cubes per tablespoon of finished sauce
Ready sauces were also on the shopping list of the testers. It turned out that some of the barbecue sauces come with three pieces of sugar per tablespoon of sauce. At Ketchup, there are still one and a half dice.

Again, the experts have a recommendation to reduce the sugar content of the respective finished dips and sauces: And by stretching them, for example, with natural yoghurt or passed tomatoes.

The soft drinks investigated showed that up to 17 pieces of sugar can be contained in a 0.5 liter bottle. Again, the fructose from fruit and juice had already been excluded.

Especially children and adolescents consume a lot of sweet lemonades. Such soft drinks are often the cause of obesity.

Although sugar-sweetened variants can save sugar, mineral or drinking water are the better thirst quenchers. (Ad)