Thank you, USDA! Wow! I am impressed.
Our very own United States Department of Agriculture has issued a new online table that lets you look up the added sugars and carbs in 2,041 common foods, the USDA announced in its article, Added Dietary Sugars Are Now Easily Identified..
The list of added sugars–which are defined as those added to foods and beverages during processing or home preparation–include such sweeteners as honey, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, corn sweetener, sucrose, lactose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup and malt syrup. (Actually, there are many more sweeteners than this so I’m curious to see the full list of sugars listed.)
According to the USDA, American consumers eat about 74 pounds of added sugars per year. This is the figure from the 1999-2002 survey data analyzed by researchers at the BHNRC’s Community Nutrition Research Group.
That’s comes to about 23 teaspoons of added sugars every day per person–or a whopping 460 nutrient-lacking calories. (Given my research, I suspect that the amount per person is much higher.)
The USDA announcement, Added Dietary Sugars Are Now Easily Identified, notes that this "special interest table" for dietary professionals and others interested in checking for added sugars, was produced by the Nutrient Data Laboratory (NDL), one of six units of the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center.(BHNRC), headed by nutritionist Joanne Holden.
See the new table at "USDA Database for the Added Sugars Content of Selected Foods."