Type 2 Diabetes now consumes close to 9% of the NHS budget and one in six hospital beds are taken up by diabetics. That is not only a terrible outcome for those suffering from this awful disease, but also a huge cost to society at large.
But why is there such a surge in this preventable disease, which is almost exclusively driven by diet? The simple answer is refined sugar. Sugar has crept its way into pretty much all our processed foods, even being added to tins of vegetables and white sliced bread where you would never expect to find them.
Sugar has been cleverly disguised on the front of food pack labelling. If you do not see ‘sugar’ on a nutritional label that does not guarantee it’s not there! In fact there are 56 synonyms of sugar that are used in manufacturing food products.
Excess levels of sugar is not good for anyone, but for diabetics it can lead to issues like spiking blood sugar, weight gain, and more. Therefore it is always good to look out for the words displayed in the picture above.
This blog post by VirtaHealth gives a great breakdown of sugar names and what to look out for on nutritional food pack labels. https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/names-for-sugar