Sugar’s hiding spots in everyday foods

Even if you’re careful, you may not know you’re getting a dose of sugar, the inflammation-causing additive that ups your risk for diabetes, heart disease, obesity, dementia and some cancers.

The best solution is to read nutrition labels (added sugars are listed) and restaurant postings. At the grocery store, keep an eye out for fruited yogurts (up to 25 grams of sugar in 6 to 7 ounces of some brands), breads (one brand’s oatmeal bread has 8 grams added sugar in two slices), canned soups (5 grams added in 1 cup of butternut squash soup) and frozen vegetables with sauce (3 ounces of a sesame sauce with mixed veggies contains 6 grams of sugar from high fructose corn syrup and brown and plain sugar). In restaurants, sugar can pop up anywhere, from the dextrose coating Mickey D’s French fries to a heart-stopping 40 grams of sugar in Wendy’s apple pecan chicken salad.

The government’s recommended intake of added sugar is 50 grams daily. We say that’s way too much. To protect your brain, heart and sex life, dodge all added sugars and enjoy sweets from fruit and 70 percent cacao dark chocolate (1 ounce a day).

Squeezing optimal nutrition out of veggie juice

Juicing can be unhealthy for your diet. For example, drinking filtered kale juice instead of eating whole leaves robs you of glucose-controlling, gut-loving fiber. And bottled “veggie juices” may contain more water, fructose and artificial ingredients than anything found in the natural vegetable.

But smoothies and straight juices can be a healthy way to eat more veggies — depending on how you juice things up. That’s the conclusion of a new study. Researchers used three different at-home methods to liquefy organic and non-organic cauliflower, kale, turnips and carrots of various colors and then measured the resulting levels of phytonutrients and antioxidants.

It turns out that blenders, high-speed centrifugal juicers and low-speed extractors produce different levels of health-promoting nutrients because of the different ways they expose vegetables’ inner tissues to oxygen, light and heat, and how they release enzymes they contain.

Overall, the best bet for maximum nutrition resulted from low-speed juicing. In contrast, using the blender resulted in the lowest overall nutrient content, but it did deliver the highest fiber content and therefore the best blood sugar control.