Natural VS Artificial Sugars
Many people fixate on the nutritional content of a product and use this information as a decider as to whether they will consume said product or not. People watching their weight, diabetics, parents watching out for their children – we’ve all been there, looking at the sugar content, gasping in horror then putting it back. However, a high sugar content doesn’t always mean the product is bad for you!
Often we get asked if there have been sugar or additives added to our juices as some people are surprised that the sugar content is higher than they had expected. The answer is NO! Our juices have no added sugars, sweeteners or water, just fruit and veg used to provide you with optimal benefits.
What is a natural sugar?
A natural sugar is naturally occurring and is found in naturally whole foods such a fruits and vegetables. Some examples of natural sugars that you may have heard of before are glucose and fructose. Fruits contain natural sugars because they have not been added to sweeten them, they occur naturally.
What is an artificial sugar?
Some artificial sugars can be chemically modified in a lab to provide a sweeter taste without adding calories. Another type of non-natural sugars are refined sugars such as caster sugar or granulated sugar. These derive from a natural source such as sugar cane, but they undergo processing so that only the sugar content remains, meaning that it is not naturally occurring,
Examples of products with vast amounts of sugar and artificial sweeteners added include, sugary fizzy drinks, even diet drinks with “no added sugar”, sweets and cereals.
What are the differences between natural and artificial sugars?
To put it simply, natural sugars are found in their purest form e.g., in fruit or dairy, and have not undergone processing or chemical modification to retain them, they just occur naturally in the product. Whereas on the other hand, products such as sweets, biscuits and cereal include un-natural, artificial sugars which have been processed and are added to help with the taste.
Just because a product may contain a ‘high’ sugar content doesn’t necessarily mean that it is bad for you and you shouldn’t consume it. Here at B.fresh, we find that some of our customers are shocked when they see the sugar content values and assume that we have added sugars.
Let’s take our Recover juice as an example, there are 27g of sugar per 250ml bottle. HOWEVER, these sugars all come from the fruits within the juice and are naturally occurring. Naturally, the higher the quantity of fruit within a juice, the higher the sugar content will be.
Recover is comprised of cherries, pomegranate, blueberries, apple and lemon – explaining why the sugar content is much higher than Lean Greens for example. A 250ml bottle of Lean Greens has 4.3g of sugar and is made from 96% vegetables.
In 250ml of Coca-Cola, there are 26.5g of sugar, nearly as much as a bottle of Recover, but these sugars are added and are in the form of sucrose or fructose which is extracted from its original source, sugar cane, not naturally occurring. Therefore, this emphasises the idea that just because a product is higher in sugars, doesn’t mean that it is bad for you.
