Pick up a jar of pasta sauce from any supermarket shelf. Read the ingredient label. You will almost certainly find sugar — but it may not be listed as sugar.

It might be listed as dextrose. Or glucose syrup. Or fruit juice concentrate. Or invert sugar. Or maltodextrin. Or any one of more than fifty other names that food manufacturers use for the same thing.

This is not accidental. It is deliberate.

When ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, having sugar appear third or fourth on the list signals to the consumer that the product is high in sugar. By splitting the sugar across five or six different names, manufacturers can push each individual sugar source further down the list — making the product appear less sweet than it actually is.

Understanding this is one of the most useful skills you can develop as someone who wants to eat well.

Why hidden sugar matters

The average adult in a Western country consumes between 70 and 100 grams of added sugar per day. The World Health Organisation recommends a maximum of 25 grams — roughly six teaspoons.

Most people are eating three to four times the recommended amount. And a large proportion of that comes from foods they would never describe as sugary.

Not sweets. Not fizzy drinks. Bread. Pasta sauce. Flavoured yogurt. Breakfast cereal. Salad dressing. Soup. Crackers. These are the foods that carry the most hidden sugar — because they are the foods people eat every day without thinking twice.

The consequence is not just excess calories. Chronic high sugar intake drives blood sugar spikes and crashes, disrupts the gut microbiome, promotes low-grade inflammation, destabilises mood, disrupts sleep, and reinforces cravings for more sugar. The afternoon energy slump most people accept as normal is, for many, primarily a blood sugar crash.

The 56 names for sugar

You do not need to memorise all of these. You need to know they exist, so that when you see a product with three or four of them in the ingredient list, you understand what is happening.

The most common ones to recognise:

Sucrose · Glucose · Fructose · Dextrose · Maltose · Lactose · Galactose · High-fructose corn syrup · Corn syrup · Corn syrup solids · Fruit juice concentrate · Apple juice concentrate · Grape juice concentrate · Agave nectar · Agave syrup · Cane sugar · Cane juice · Evaporated cane juice · Raw cane sugar · Beet sugar · Brown sugar · Coconut sugar · Invert sugar · Invert syrup · Malt syrup · Barley malt · Rice syrup · Brown rice syrup · Oat syrup · Maple syrup · Molasses · Blackstrap molasses · Treacle · Golden syrup · Honey · Raw honey · Dehydrated cane juice · Muscovado · Turbinado · Sucanat · Carob syrup · Sorghum · Sorghum syrup · Refiner's syrup · Diastatic malt · Diastase · Ethyl maltol · Maltodextrin · Dextrin · Florida crystals · Panela · Piloncillo · Anything ending in -ose · Anything described as syrup · Anything described as juice concentrate

When you see three or more of these in a single ingredient list, that product has significant added sugar regardless of where each individual ingredient sits in the order.

The three-step label check

Reading a label well takes about thirty seconds once you know what to look for.

Step one — read the ingredients list first, not the nutrition panel. Look for sugar names in the first five ingredients. If sugar appears more than once in any form, the product is high in added sugar.

Step two — check the nutrition panel for the "of which sugars" figure under carbohydrates. More than 22.5 grams per 100 grams is high. Less than 5 grams per 100 grams is low. Everything in between warrants a look at how often you eat it.

Step three — ignore the front of the packet entirely. "Natural", "wholesome", "no artificial ingredients", "vitamin-enriched" — these are marketing claims, not nutritional information. The back of the packet is information. The front is advertising.

The most surprising offenders

In my experience working through this with people who are trying to eat better, these are the products that cause the most surprise:

Flavoured yogurt — a single pot can contain 15 to 20 grams of added sugar. More than a chocolate biscuit.

Granola — marketed as a health food, often contains 25 grams of sugar per 100 grams. A standard bowl delivers as much sugar as a can of fizzy drink.

Pasta sauce — typically 8 to 12 grams per serving. Made from tomatoes, which contain natural sugars, and then additional sugar is added to balance the acidity.

Bread — particularly soft packaged loaves. Two to four grams per slice, which adds up across the day.

Salad dressing — especially low-fat varieties, which replace removed fat with sugar to maintain palatability.

Soup — tinned and carton soups regularly contain 6 to 10 grams per serving.

What to do with this information

The goal is not to eliminate sugar from your life. It is to stop consuming it without knowing it.

Start with one product you buy every week. Read the label properly. If it is high in hidden sugar, find an alternative. Plain full-fat yogurt with fresh fruit instead of flavoured. Tinned tomatoes with garlic and olive oil instead of jarred pasta sauce. Plain rolled oats instead of flavoured instant sachets.

One swap per week. After two months, your default shop looks completely different — not through restriction, but through awareness applied consistently over time.

That is how the knowing-doing gap closes. Not through information alone. Through information followed by one small action, repeated until it becomes automatic.