Guess The Food: Lurking Sugar
Guess The Food: Lurking Sugar
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This product, which you will be guessing, is a quintessential example of this. Before I started reading labels on food products I used to buy and drink this stuff all of the time! To be honest, I still occasionally drink it because I like the taste of it, but the difference is that now I imagine I’m drinking a Coke instead of something healthy.
Let’s dig in so you can see the problem and also hopefully guess the “food”!
Sugar City
There is really nothing to this thing except two things: sugar and random vitamins.
So it’s important to know, before we go on, how much sugar 32 grams of sugar actually is.
It’s this much:
It’s about a quarter of a cup of sugar. If I gave you this bowl of sugar and told you to eat it, you would probably be grossed out which is why it upsets me SO much when producers hide this kind of sugar content in their products.
To be clear, this is almost exactly HALF the sugar that you get in the same amount of Coca-Cola, but it’s still a lot. When people drink Coke, I think they know they are drinking sugar. I’m not sure that’s true for this product.
The only other thing on the nutritional label really is some vitamins. And the important question to ask is if the vitamins make up for the sugar.
It might look like a lot of vitamins, but let’s put this in perspective:
- One baby carrot (about an ounce) has four times as much Vitamin A as this entire product.
- Pretty much anything you eat during the day that is green, orange, or red will give you as much Vitamin C as this.
- Two eggs will give you more VitaminB12.
I could keep going but the truth is that these are small amounts of vitamins and if you are eating even a halfway healthy diet, you are getting all of these vitamins and more.
The Ingredients
Sorry for the blurring! Let’s get to the ingredients.
Reverse Osmosis Water: A fancy name for filtered water. Ever use a Brita? There ya go.
Crystalline Fructose: A fancy name for sugar. It’s actually 5% sweeter than high-fructose corn syrup.
Cane Sugar: A less fancy name for sugar.
Citric Acid: A common additive to make foods slightly sour or acidic.
Magnesium Lactate: A mineral supplement added to many foods.
All of the vitamins are pretty self-explanatory. That’s how they get the vitamins. They add them in.
Natural Flavors: The mystery of the food world. Nobody knows!
Modified Food Starch: An emulsifier that keeps all the ingredients from separating.
Sorbitol: A sugar substitute. No idea why this is needed.
Guess the “Food”!
This one might be pretty easy for some people, but I mainly wanted to highlight the crazy sugar situation.
In any event, leave a comment! Can you guess the “food”?!
Orange-orange flavored Vitaminwater.
Yuck.
Nice call Matt! The fact that you got the flavor is impressive because I intentionally photoshopped the wrapper color. Haha.
Gatorade?
Vitamin Water
Boom! Yes. This one was too easy. :)
vitamin water? Plain ol water quenches the thirst and tastes better in my opinion!
they pretend like it is good for you. sure it is
Ya… that’s pretty much right. Drink water if you are thirsty. Or beer. ;)
Vitamin Water! Based on the label coloring, I think it is the “XXX” flavor. I like Vitamin Water, but only as a less-bad substitute for soda (half the sugar is significant), not as a replacement for regular water.
Bingo. I changed the label color because I thought it was too obviously. Definitely Vwater though.
Definitely vitamin water! I used to drink it all the time until I realized this =(
Me too!
Vitamin Water. What a waste of space….
Yea… it kind of is. I like it when the Extreme Couponing shows get this for free… like… who would want 100 of these even if they are free?
Nasty flavored water or Gatorade.
looks like we all think it’s vitamin water, definitely my first thought!
Boom. Nice call Hilary.
Oh, that definitely has to be Vitamin water, yuck!
Definitely. Nice call.
And people drink this whilst riding their high horses, so to speak.
Haha. True story.
The first thing that popped into my head was Vitamin Water but I never even had it or looked at the contents.
Absolutely. It should be called sugar water but I don’t think that name change would get passed the board room.
Definitely Vitamin Water.
My first thought too, vitamin water
Yep! That’s the one.
That souped-up Kool-Aid called Vitamin Water.
THat’s interesting.. I should compare it to Kool-Aid. I bet they are similar.
Wow. Vitamin water. I wouldn’t have guessed. I was going to say V8 fruit juice or Hawaiian Punch. That’s a lot of sugar.
The reverse osmosis water gave it away for me! Definitely Vitamin Water =)
I don’t drink cokes, I don’t drink fruit juice, basically I drink water, tea and coffee, why would someone actually drink vitamin water? Take a multivitamin and drink a glass of water if you’re looking to get some vitamins. Want flavor? Add lemons, cucumbers, mint, anything. That’s just wrong on so many levels.
Nick, you’re doing an great job educating people about the foods their choosing. People need to be clear on this.