Hidden Sugars

I was with friends last weekend and brought home some leftover peanut butter that a friend left behind. Since it was a brand I had purchased before I thought it would be better to use than toss in the trash. 

When I gave some to my 9 year old son he said, "I don't like this. It tastes like Jif!" I looked at the label and saw this. 

Organic evaporated cane syrup added?!

I have to admit I was pretty impressed that my son was able to taste the sugar. Here is another jar, by the same brand that we had in our refrigerator. 

As I compare the labels I now see that the one I purchased was organic and the one I brought home was labeled as natural. We all know that "natural" has no relevance or legal definition, but I would not think that natural would mean added sugar. In addition, there are definitely organic foods out there that have a ton of added sugar (organic sugar, of course!).

Perfect - just dry roasted peanuts (the only type of roasting we should eat) and sea salt.

I've always been careful and tell my clients to read the ingredient list when purchasing nut butters, particularly peanut, because most have added sugar. This is why. We can't even look to the brand and have confidence that there are no added sugars. We also can't just look at the nutrition information and know if there is added sugar. Compare the nutrition information from two peanut butters.

Added sugar leads to 3g of sugar per serving

No added sugar still naturally has 2g of sugar.

The total amount of sugar is not that different but why have sugar added when we don't need it and it changes the taste of the product? We should try to keep our kids away from as much added sugar as possible.

We typically buy this one from Costco and you can see by the ingredient list that there is no added sugar.