Study finds two-thirds of packaged foods in Canada contain added sugar
TORONTO – Researchers checking for added sugar on the ingredients lists of packaged foods and beverages expected to find it in candy products, but they didn’t predict the high levels they would find in baby food, snack bars and beverages.
In looking at more than 40,000 prepackaged foods, researchers found that two-thirds of all those products contained at least one form of added sugar.
“We find that three-quarters of all beverages had added sugar, that products that often people associate with a healthy alternative, things like snack bars — I think it was 99.4 per cent of snack bars contained added sugars. We even found that about half of baby food included added sugar,” said David Hammond, professor in the school of public health at the University of Waterloo.
“So it wasn’t a case of were the levels high and low in some other categories. It was a case of high and higher.”