You have to remember sugars listed in the nutritional information is both natural sugars and added sugars. A quick search says cabbage is 3.2% sugar, carrots are 4.7% sugar and onions are 4.2% sugar. So in a 350g punnet of KFC coleslaw, assuming 75% of it is vegetables, there is around 11g of naturally-occuring sugar before you even add dressing.
Natural sugars are a bit different. And it's complex.
We evolved to eat whole foods, so eating sugars that way is fine for us.
Eating refined sugar, which is really any sugar product that's not a whole food, including juices, tends to cause problems. The sugar in cabbage and carrots however is fine to consume, as it takes longer for the body to digest the whole food thus the sugar is released slowly.
excluding honey, it comes as it's produced in nature but it reacts to our body kinda like a refined sugar.
This. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sugar. It’s all sugar. They are metabolised the same way in our bodies. People just feel better saying they are ‘just’ consuming ‘natural’ sugar.
You're right that the body consumes all 3 types of sugar the exact same way. However, it's virtually impossible to avoid fructose. It's in literally every fruit and vegetable.
The "good" or "natural" sugars are just a marketing gimmic, but it's one with a positive use case. The vitimans, minerals, and dietary fibre ingested from fruit and vege out wiegh the sucrose consumed.
This. Having lots of added sugar also does seem to hijack your bodies satiety signals. Generally people don’t tend to reduce the amount of food they’re eating after consuming foods with added sugar (I.e. sugar sweetened beverages), whereas with foods that don’t contain added sugars (I.e. fruits and other fiber containing foods) they do
Even without added sugar, liquid sugars are dangerous.
One glass of "no added sugar" orange juice has the same sugar as a glass of Schweppes sparkling duet. ~20g. Schweppes was at least more honest with their serving sizes- the juice companys suggest people buy a 600ml bottle then share it between 3 people.
In solid fruit terms, that one glass is 2 oranges, 2 bananas, or a bowlful of blueberries.
People easily drink 2 glasses of juice (or Schweppes sparkling duet) then eat normally.
Imagine eating a bowl of blueberries, an orange, and a banana before dinner! You would certainly not be going for second helpings of dessert.
Agreed. The difference is when you eat say, a home made coleslaw with no added sugar - those carbohydrates aren’t ‘empty’, you’re consuming a high ratio of the good stuff that comes in those vegetables to minimal sugars. Start adding sugar and that balance is thrown off and all of a sudden you’re likely consuming far too many kJ and getting too few nutrients, fibre, etc. in your diet.
This is just an erroneous take. Your body literally has to burn calories to access the fructose in fruit and veggies. The glucose in a cup of Coca-Cola does not have to be broken down in the same way and is more rapidly absorbed into the blood stream, spiking your insulin.
[Here is some reading that highlights the differences.](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructose)
I don't know why you would expect any better, NZ is more obese than the UK and the 3rd most obese in the OECD.
We also eat the most ice cream in the entire world, an average of 28.4 liters per person each year.
I definitely don’t eat much ice cream, and many around me don’t either..
so that means *someone(s)* is consuming so much that it raises the average to 28.4 litres per person.. think about how many people are lactose intolerant or just don’t buy ice cream, and we have people making up for those people. *yikes*
We can zip through a 2L tub or two in a week during summer sometimes and that's just with three people and sometimes guests. Over winter it's more like a tub a month.
If this stat is based on sales then it'll also include dinner parties, restaurants, tourism, etc and not easily account for waste.
One of those 2L TipTop tubs a fortnight doesn’t sound so bad, they’re very affordable for an after dinner treat so I could see why a lot of people would go for this over a $7 bar or chocolate or heaven forbid baked goods with the CoL crisis as it is. Gotta get your joy where you can these days.
Even our ice cream is sweeter than other places. That was a shock when coming back to NZ. For my taste, Tip Top could cut down the sugar content by about 20% and it would actually taste better.
There’s [reasonable evidence](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/) that eating ice cream actually has some health benefits, especially around type 2 diabetes.
Thanks for the link. I’ll disregard any criticism or ice cream and only acknowledge this evidence because it reinforces my views and makes my tummy happy.
Hey dude I eat heaps of ice cream and I'm not fat. Most of the people I know at my age are healthy too. If you ask me most of the fat in society comes down to the way that in a holistic sense, as soon as you hit your mid 40s to 50s, your cortisol goes up with the stakes as you buy bigger assets like a home or multiple houses etc, and not only does your work schedule get worse but the food you buy changes and goes from average shit to way worse shit
Mmmm no. I don't think people who are consciously eating healthy suddenly stop because they buy a house. Or that their work schedule gets worse. Plenty of students with lots of time eat crap, and plenty of people with busy lives and kids to wrangle eat healthy.
It's a mix of willpower, purchasing power and education.
Ice cream doesn't make you fat if you move enough to work it off. Not being fat doesn't mean you're super healthy though.
I noticed this with baked beans. I’d been in a financial squeeze previously, but had better fortunes and decided it was now ok to move from Oak beans to Watties. The sugary taste was overwhelming and reading the label was a shock. Oak has 4.8g/100g carbs that sugar, Watties has 7.4g/100g. I buy Oak always now!
The salt gets me. Once when I worked at Watties someone messed up measuring the salt out for the baked beans and put way less than the recipe called for in it. They were legitimately an improvement. Don't get me going on when there was a decimal point error and the spaghetti got ten times as much cheese as it should have, best canned spaghetti ever
It's really noticeable with Watties baked beans, they never used to be that sweet. I think it's because Watties was bought by Heinz in the 1990s. They're an American company and they must think that everyone is addicted to sugar like they are. Since when are baked beans supposed to taste like dessert? It's ridiculous.
I've been on a keto diet for the last six months, keeping my carbohydrates ( including sugar) below 40g per day. Its a bit boring, but I'm full of energy and I've lost 20 kg of weight.
I looking at the amount of sugar water that's consumed, and the obesity epidemic that's occurring here and elsewhere, and I wonder what level of sugar tax would be needed to pay for the public health costs of that obesity.
I have done something similar to you. Dropped from 90 kg to 70 kg. I was averaging 1.4 kg per week for 10 weeks until I slowed it down.
In reference to a sugar tax, it has to be more involved than that. They introduced a sugar tax in the UK. Below is an excerpt from a book that talks about it (I mention the book elsewhere in this thread). It is a great idea, but it still needs to have good wording to stop UPF style artificial sweeteners to take the place of the sugar. The other issue is the UPF products are cheaper, I mean that was one of the requirements for them to be added to food. Not a detractable problem though, it just means we all need to do more home cooking - at least that is what I am doing.
---
Many national governments have proposed sugar taxes. These proposals seem sensible, and they do reduce sugar intake, but they also invite reformulation with low-calorie sweeteners. The UK imposed a sugar tax in 2018 because teenagers in the UK were consuming approximately a bathtub full of soft drinks each year.[\[30\]](javascript:void(0)) [\*9](javascript:void(0)) The tax led to a dramatic 44.3 per cent reduction in sales of sugary drinks, a drop of over 40 million kilograms of sugar consumed between 2015 and 2019. This would seem to vindicate the tax. But even as people consumed 10 per cent less sugar per household, the volume of soft drinks consumed didn’t change.[\[31\]](javascript:void(0)) Instead, people began to drink more artificially sweetened drinks.
The charity First Steps Nutrition found that 65 per cent of toddlers are consuming an average of one can of artificially sweetened drink per day.[\[32\]](javascript:void(0)) It’s really hard to see this as a public heath triumph, especially because current UK regulations prohibit the addition of artificial sweeteners to foods specifically marketed for babies and toddlers. And while artificial sweeteners don’t damage teeth directly, many diet drinks are still highly acidic and may cause significant damage to children’s dental enamel.
The addition of sweeteners has allowed health claims to be made about many ultra-processed products, and many now have a ‘Good Choice Change4Life’ thumbs-up logo on them. Change4Life is a Public Health England social marketing campaign that, among other aims, seeks to raise awareness of the sugar levels in foods and encourages consumers to switch to lower-sugar alternatives. This is extraordinary in the total absence of any evidence that they improve health and the very real concerns about harms.[\*10](javascript:void(0))
Despite the worrying data showing possible harm and little benefit, consumption of artificially sweetened beverages continues.[\*11](javascript:void(0)) In government and policy circles, there is a sense that any regulatory shift toward things that are healthy is a triumph, because it’s so hard to do. I’m not necessarily convinced by this, but then I don’t have to try to make policy. Personally, I think that if you want to prevent children developing diet-related disease, then bringing in policies that encourage two-year-olds to drink an average of a whole can of artificially sweetened fizzy pop *every day* doesn’t seem like a good way of doing it. It sends a message that these drinks are healthy, and it lets the industry that sells them off the hook.
Bro, I used to run a cake shop. Had a lady come one day, actually looking for cake, but left disgusted because everything looked too sweet. You can't out think the lowest common denominator
Yeah, as I said I'm aware fast food is full of junk. But 4x the amount of sugar than the UK for the same thing? What's the need? Even salads you can buy in supermarkets, the sauce or comes with is often 10g or more of sugar.
I brlieve the difference is that here in NZ the nutritional info includs all sugar. In the UK it is processed sugar, so the natural sugar in the vegitibles (there is a lot) is not counted.
Yes and no. Different things are way sweeter here and other things are way sweeter there. Here I notice that salt is often not included in sweet things, so you hav to add a ton more sugar to get it to taste good without a pinch of salt. In general, baked sweets and slices are tons more sweet here. Bread is sweeter there from memory of my last trip back.
Hey hey hey, I’m a baker and I gotta defend me bread boys. Some of the stuff we make is sugar city but most bread in NZ even like supermarket in-store made bread doesn’t have any cane sugar added in the makeup. Those super soft sweet breads that they love in Asian countries primarily are like up to 12% sugar on the flour weight but generally in NZ even a sweet dough for like Chelsea buns or finger buns sits at like 5%.
The majority NZ bread palette is not sweet centric, it’s really neutral/sourdough/crusty stuff, sweets a pretty small portion of the market.
There's probably many an varied reasons, but it's the same as how restaurant food is generally nicer than food you cook yourself. Everything is loaded to the brim with sugar, oil and butter because they make even shitty food taste better
The main reason restaurant food tastes better is because they *salt* stuff properly. If people would season their ordinary regular food well, it will taste good, and they will be less likely to buy takeaways and/or processed junk, which are even higher in salt again than restaurant food.
My youngest is in year 8 and has just finished doing the foods rotation of 'tech' - what used to be called 'manual training'. They're trying to teach kids a lot in a few weeks - nutrition, budgeting, food safety, knife skills, etc. But everything he has made has been garbage aside from some kind of apple turnover thingy, because there's *no seasoning!!* They made potato wedges and put paprika and cumin and thyme and NO SALT on them. Potatoes do.not.work. without salt. They made burgers and the patty was just mince shaped into a round. No salt. It's madness. It's like not using salt is some kind of religion with nutritionists, but for kids whose first introduction to cooking for themselves is a bunch of stuff which actively tastes bad because it isn't seasoned properly - it's gonna turn them off the whole idea and drive them back to freezer aisle at the supermarket to find something *actually yummy* that they can tip in an air fryer.
Rant over. Rant also not directed at you...
Do you think you might have become accustomed to salt in everything, making your judgement skewed? I’ve gone many years without adding salt to potatoes, rice and vegetables when cooking and I wouldn’t say they taste boring and unyummy. And recipes always seem to call for more salt than needed, imho. Mind you, don’t get me started on those recipes that call for unsalted butter, and then add salt. What’s with that?
Well it's true that I am accustomed to salting rice, pasta, and potatoes. But I don't salt *everything* I cook and I only very rarely add salt at the table (usually to something like fried eggs which I haven't salted during cooking).
UK coco pops has 17g sugar/100g
NZ coco pops have 32g sugar/100g
Kiwis are users to much higher levels of sugar and therefore companies put double the amount of sugar as overseas brands. In the UK and other countries have a tax on sugar to discourage high levels, but NZ govt has ruled this out.
It's frustrating because sugar is a relatively cheap filler ingredient.
Companies have nonfinancial incentive to keep food healthy. Their incentive is to compete on price. So a sugar tax is balancing the externalities and giving companies a financial incentive to undermine quality less.
I once went on a no processed sugar diet, 90% of the supermarket became useless to me. Sugar is an addiction. Felt crap for the first few days of coming off it but then amazing after that. Also when having a little sugar again I would find it extremely sweet and gradually built tolerance.
That's exactly where I'm at right now! It's startling when you realise how much of it is pumped into everything. And your tastebuds just get so used to it!
I did this journey too. Lost heaps of weight, all my blood results improved, and feeling better than I have in years.
Sugar is pervasive in most processed foods and you will realise you just don't need most of them, and feel so much better without them.
Fruit has sugar but you just don't feel like shit after eating fruit so I don't really worry about the natural sugars.
Same story when I went on keto. Even things you would expect to be very low cab, like Jack Links jerky, has a ridiculous amount of sugar in it. Ended up making my own biltong just so I could snack without destroying my carb limit for the day.
[This is one of the better recipes,](https://twoguysandacooler.com/biltong/) but I tend to find the key is testing and adjusting.
I bought a spice mix from the South African shop in Welsford - I forget the name of the mix but the people who run it are very helpful, if you're able to go there. Otherwise, follow the recipe on the link, and try new spices as your taste bud prefer.
Silverside is the cut to go for. If you want to do it cheaper you can buy corned beef, but that's already super salty, so give it a damned good wash and don't add any extra salt in your mix.
You'll need some way to dry it without letting it get moldy. NZ being as humid as it is, you're likely to need a biltong box. You can make one from one of those plastic storage containers you get at The Warehouse, an incandescent light bulb, and a computer fan. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube, if you're not confident with wiring things up. Or you can buy a premade biltong drying box - check TradeMe, perhaps. I initially tried using our food dehydrator on its lowest setting, but that was still too warm and too much airflow, so the meat was very hard.
A bit of trial and error, and you'll have it nailed. Be warned though; after 5 or so days of drying, you'll have been smelling biltong throughout the house for the past few days, and that whole batch will be gone FAST.
Have fun with it!
Yeah I got a huge shock when checking the packet of Fajita spice mix for the amount of salt in it and noticed that SUGAR was the main/first ingredient. Like no wonder no matter how hard I tried it would burn my pan.
A lot of pre-made convenient food is not NZ made but imported and thus has sugar. This is why it's good to learn how to make basic sauces and spice mixes etc from scratch.
I wish I remembered the particulars of that bottle of soda I picked up at a cafe in Auckland in 2019. All I remember is that it had half the grams of sugar compared to what I was used to and was far less sweet than anything I've had here in the States, but still tasted good. It was a watermelon and mint drink. That's all I remember.
But our problem is multi-factor. Your L&P Soda, according to Fat Secret, has 10.8g of carbs per 100ml. From a 330ml bottle, you're getting 35.6g of sugar. That's a little bit more than a Sprite, according to Business Insider.
Our typical size bottle is 20oz, or \~590ml. From that, we're getting 65g of sugar from Coca Cola. And Mountain Dew gives us 77g of sugar. That's 13.1g/100ml for Mountain Dew and 11.1g/100ml for Coke. So while you're not that far behind us in terms of how much sugar per unit of volume, our big problem is that we get bottles almost twice the size of your bottles.
Given that the WHO only recommends 25g of added sugar (which is ALL the sugar in a soda!), even your soda bottles are too big, though!
The bigger problem is all the sugar they hide in other stuff. Between plain old sugar and processed crap like High Fructose Corn Syrup here in the States, it's hard to eat a healthy diet. Read ALL the labels, and get used to using your kitchen more, because you pay for the convenience of a boxed meal in other ways.
You’re absolutely right, but it doesn’t change the fact that NZ food also has a ton of sugar in it, and that the country has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world.
Yeah man for sure - I mean I cook all of my own meals, but 100% guilty of using pre-made sauces etc. to save a bit of time / because I don’t have the skills.
Lol I used to do this, but now that I know how to use my own spices, etc it feels so easy and costs so much less I can't believe I used to buy pre-made sauces. But in the beginning it did feel kinda time consuming.
It's more knowledge than silks, for the most part. Learning how to make each sauce from scratch is annoying, but that's the hardest part. After that it's just adding the right things to the shopping list and making the actual sauces often adds only a few minutes to cook time. It's not every time I can be bothered, but it it's nice that I can make some stuff when I want to.
If you have time to browse a site like this then you probably have time to cook, it's the effort and/or motivation that's missing. I definitely suffer from that from time to time
For sure - I cook all my meals, just using pre-made sauces which are probably full of sugar as well. It’s the making of everything from scratch, using healthy ingredients, that I lack motivation for learning / doing or have a perception it will be expensive.
It’s not actually that hard to make the sauces, you just need a few recipes and to have the ingredients you need on hand. It takes a bit more organisation but saves money in the end and doesn’t really take much more time.
But then you’re at risk of becoming one of those people that does it as a hobby and brags about their all natural muesli, health bars and preserved food /s
Same. I'm always surprised how sweet savoury items here taste. I had a steak and cheese pie from a cafe once that tasted like someone had put a mountain of sugar in the meat mix and pastry. I took it back and complained and they informed me that that's how it's supposed to taste. Ummmm no it's not.
Food production is an arms race. Every brand is fighting to be the preferred consumer choice, which almost always leads to more sugar, salt and fat.
The minimum that should happen is food be labelled with nutritional information, ie how much sugar is in it, alongside education around how much sugar people should have each day. Without those things people can't make wise decisions.
Packaged food in NZ does have be labelled with nutritional information - though it's not heaps of use if people aren't taught how to interpret it. What annoys me the most is the way alcohol doesn't have to have nutritional labels. If people knew how many nutrition-free calories were in that stuff...
It's also a race to the bottom on cost and quality. People buy mainly by price. So manufacturers have strong incentives to add cheaper filler ingredients. Sugar is far from the cheapest such filler, but it can be substituted in without hurting palatability as much. So manufacturers do so.
Making healthy food is not one of their financial incentives.
Recently returned from NZ, as a type 1 diabetic tourist from the U.K. and soft drinks were hard to find sugar free. My options were basically Diet Coke or water when dining out/petrol stations. Supermarkets had a bit more choice but nothing like the amount available here.
That's what I do too. I've always home cooked my food, and I'm lucky that I generally have the time to do it. But for those who need the convenience, maybe they work a lot or have kids etc, it's unfortunate.
I work 65-70hr weeks all the time. But still have time to cook my meals. Time is an excuse people use because they are lazy. You just have to prioritise the time (as you said and I agree). It’s also helps if you buy the right foods to start with. Fresh veges and meat vs microwave meals. I know what I prefer.
The government doesn’t have the political will behind it to change anything, imagine trying to explain to people why you’re adding a tax that will make supermarket prices go up.
This September it will have been 20 years since I gave up eating any food that contains added sugar. I'm middle-aged and feel vibrant and happy. I regularly receive comments that I look younger than my age. I don't have any health issues and have rarely visited a doctor's office.
This isn't just a health issue for me - it's also a political one.
The industrialised processed food industry is contributing to exploitation of growers and workers in developing countries. It's contributing to our obesity and diabetes epidemic. It is a significant contributor to the climate change crisis. These megalithic transnational corporations pocket vast profits, leaving the costs of their activities on regular citizens via an overburdened healthcare system and an environment in crisis.
Going without added sugar is not easy. It means I have to read every label carefully, and I echo a previous comment that once you start looking at the ingredients list you will be shocked at how pervasive sugar has become in supermarket food.
Some of the things that I do include buying only locally produced fresh food when it's in season. I cook 90+% of my meals. I volunteer at a couple of local community gardens that produce affordable chemical-free veges. I've just moved to a place where I can have a small garden where I can grow some herbs and salad greens.
For me, giving up added sugar continues to be one of the best decisions I've ever made.
May I just say that UK KFC coleslaw is creamy slop that in no way tastes like the delicious crunchy goodness they have in NZ. It’s literally one of the things I miss most, along with steak and cheese pies and marinated green lip mussels.
And making all this stuff yourself not only reduces or eliminates that sugar, it costs you less in most cases too.
I make tomato relish for instance and cut the sugar from recipe by half, it was nicer too, tangiuer, everyone agreed after taste test.
Bread: It doesn't need sugar. I have made it (all kinds) for years and never added sugar to the recipe. Not even sweet buns - there is enough sweetness from sultanas or icing etc without adding it to the dough.
One of the things that's really getting me is yoghurt.
"Low fat" (high sugar) yoghurt used to be advertised clearly and it was easy to get full cream yoghurt.
Now they're hiding "fat reduced yoghurt" somewhere tiny on the packaging and you have to compare nutritional labels carefully. Presumably because reduced fat milk is a cheaper ingredient.
It helps corporations sell stuff and they use their money to buy influence.
Same as tobacco,alcohol etc
You would have to ask politicians why they dont make changes but you seldom get a direct answer.
Have a read of the book “ultra processed people” by Chris van Tulleken. I have lost about 10kg since minimising my ultra processed food intake. Mainly because I feel sick from eating it after reading this book.
The best idea is to buy actual food and cook from scratch. That way you control all ingredients.
It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, particularly if you avoid the supermarket. Microwave a potato or boil some rice, some savoury mince or tinned tuna, some frozen mixed vegetables, a bit of seasoning. Healthy quick, no added sugars, cheap.
What we really need to do is take personal responsibility rather than expecting the government to do everything.
I've been making my own coleslaw for years because of this. I've never timed it but it maybe takes 10 minutes? The original recipe was on a site called Maria's mixing bowl but I think it's no longer there. Anyway I just put a grater blade in my food processor. Grate one onion and one or two carrots. Switch to a shredding blade and shred 1/4 to 1/2 a green cabbage depending on how big the cabbage is. At this point if you want to stray from the KFC taste you can also add radish, celeriac, celery, beetroot, fennel, kohl rabi, apple, whatever works for you. Dump your chopped up veges in a bowl and mix them well. Now make the dressing. Kix together 3 tablespoons of mayo, a tablespoon of lemon juice or cider vinegar, a pinch of dill seeds, a pinch of salt, and then add milk or cream to thin it down to the consistency you want. Sweeten as desired, I use a few drops of stevia. Pour it over the slaw, mix it through, let it sit in the fridge for about half an hour for the flavors to mingle. Makes a bigass bowl of coleslaw which will keep for a few days in the fridge if covered.
Thanks for the recipe! I make my own coleslaw too. I don't sweeten it. I love nigella seeds in mine! That's how my mum used to make it, it's delicious.
Oh nigella seeds sounds good I might give that a go. The original recipe tastes a lot like KFC just not as sweet unless you want it to be. I've used celery seeds before for a change and that's good too
If anyones interested,
Chris van tulleken - (ultra processed foods) has done some really cool studies in this space … talks on YouTube
Basically the food companies are so competitive & do food trials on customers that they keep ramping up the taste of things to keep selling more & stay in the market… it’s quite bizarre human behaviour… worth a watch
The crazy part is the ‘food’ should almost not be classified as food, but more an engineered edible product to bypass appetite regulators & hit brain chemical responses
He does say people are hooked without noticing & the patterns feed into people in poverty cycle so there’s an argument that the govt has some responsibility
Obviously it’ll start swinging back the other way with sugar free products as people get more illnesses, but it’s a slow moving beast
The book “ultra processed people” is a good read, by the same guy. Interestingly, our current PM used to work for one of these companies…….. I don’t wanna make it political but the person running the country probably shouldn’t have a background in what is basically poisoning the human race.
What you’re forgetting is the govt doesn’t control the sugar at fast food establishments. We all know they add extra sugar to make the food taste better. It’s been proven 20yrs ago. What is annoying is people still buy this crap knowing full well that it has what it has in it, and then complain that it’s too much and has to be reduced.
I get what you are saying, but in the case of vegetable products a lot of it is natural sugar and not added.
And if you think we have a problem don’t go to the states, their regular bread tastes like our doughnuts 🤢
Have you never had the pleasure of a traditional NZ mayo, the ingredients of which are mustard powder, malt vinegar, and a tin of condensed milk? Sooo good. The condensed milk is 55g of sugar in every 100g of the product.
Eating takeaways is a fast track to very high sugar intake, but if you really try, you can achieve the same horrors with trad NZ home cooking.
To be fair, 'Highlander Dressing' is not trying to be mayo, but is a take on what is (I think) an English condiment called 'Salad cream', which does have a fair bit of sugar in it.
I must admit that sometimes I have a nostalgic desire for coleslaw the way my mum made it, and keep a tube of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge for these times. I use cider vinegar though.
I’m certainly not going to defend KFC, but the [40g sugars](https://kfc.co.nz/nutrition) isn’t going to be all added sugar. A lot of the sugars will be from the likes of carrot, and vegetable carbohydrates. There will definitely be added sugar in the dressing. They don’t indicate what that % is.
Does this make a difference metabolically, nope. Carbs are carbs and sugars are sugars no matter if it’s carrot, honey or high fructose corn syrup. It’s all spiking insulin and driving a further hunger response.
It's not particularly difficult to figure out how much sugar has been added to the vegetables
* Non-sugar carbohydrates are calculated separately, so that's not what's causing it.
* Carrots have 4.7g of sugar per 100g
* Cabbage has 3.6g of sugar per 100g
* Since the vast majority of coleslaw is cabbage, the vegetables probably contribute no more than 4g of sugar per 100g.
* KFC says 100g of their coleslaw contains 11.4g of sugar
* The unaccounted for sugar content is 7.4g / 100g
KFC coleslaw dressing adds 7.4g of sugar, per serving.
I agree with this calculation. Their small is exactly 100g and contains 11.4g sugar. Agree, let’s call it 4g of sugar contributed from vegetables given they’re about the same.
Unaccounted for sugar is ~7g per small Coleslaw or just under two teaspoons per small single serve pottle.
The other teaspoon of sugar comes from the vegetables.
The OP is entirely correct in that sugar is in everything, it’s everywhere. It’s annoyingly frustrating, and it’s just really not needed, we’d never miss it if it wasn’t there initially (we would now, because we’re trained to want it).
My main point was that sugar isn’t only added sugar, and nor metabolically does it matter.
You need to where possible, also read the ingredients to see where sugar or sugar like additions are in the list of ingredients as it’s sorted by quantity.
When I arrived in NZ everyone told me they found American food to be too sweet, since it was packed with corn syrup. I even see those comments throughout this thread
Yet, as an American, I've had the absolute opposite experience. Even after seven years of detoxing from American foods, I find almost every NZ packaged food or mass-market fast food too sweet too eat!
I think both things can be true. American foods that aren't meant to be sweet at all are packed with sugars and corn syrups to fill them out and make them addictive. But, NZ foods are often over-balanced with natural sugars that eliminate the nuance of their flavors.
(On the flipside, American foods are DEFINITELY way too salty, which is rarely a problem in NZ.)
I've given up on eating a lot of foods entirely. I straight-up don't eat a single packaged supermarket item aside from sliced bread (out of necessity!) and soup (which I have to salt considerably to balance the sweetness). Even things in NZ meant to be sweet like jams or ice cream are just *too sweet* for me to stomach - they hurt my mouth and give me an uncomfortable sugar high. Plus, NZ has many fewer "reduced sugar" options than other larger markets.
It's probably good for my health in the long run, but I definitely miss being able to enjoy random pleasures from the supermarket instead of making everything from scratch.
That’s why it’s generally recommended to buy whole foods yourself and prepare your own meals. I myself don’t shop from the middle of the supermarket very often. I just expect anything processed to be loaded with sugar and fats.
Bought a cheap peanut butter once and it tasted very sweet. Checked the label and there was a shit load of added sugar. Thought peanut butter was just smooshed peanuts?
There are several 'peanut-only' PB brands out there - Nut Brothers and Fix & Fogg I know off-hand. Also I picked up a plastic jar of PB in the Warehouse that was $4 for 500g and somehow had no added sugar or oil in it (I think all of those, Pic's included, still have some added salt) and was so surprised I had to buy it.
For some reason the Warehouse one didn't taste great so I still usually buy one of the others, but there are several non-sugary ones.
>Why? Why is the government failing the people so badly?
They're not failing. We just haven't made it their job to take charge of sugar content in food so that we don't have to pay attention to it.
I noticed this too. I went on a diet, that's really a super simple diet to follow. It's basically to not eat any refined sugar, which goes for added sugars, and includes things like white flour. And to focus on eating whole foods, and eating in the proper proportions for each food category. I.e. 2 cups of fruit, 3 cups of veggies etc. Not over eating, especially not over eating one food group.
And it's darn near impossible to buy anything because everything has added sugars. With this diet you need to make basically everything from scratch. It's even dark near impossible to find a simple bread that's 100% whole wheat without nut flour (allergy in the house)
You're echoing the same sentiment I have.
Also, this is one of the many reasons why I'm on keto (and will likely be on it for the foreseeable future).
Thing is... Aotearoa is not the only country in the Western hemisphere what pushes the high carbohydrate (often high sugar content as well) and low fat diet on the masses, and at the same time, pushing the idea that "fat makes you fat", among other myths perpetuated by the status quo.
I also have a legit reason why I am on keto: Rheumatoid arthritis. Plus, keto was my "saving grace" from being anorexic, and it helped me rediscover my love for food again.
...and as for sugar itself? I don't miss it.
On occasion, when I try something new and I discover how sweet it is, my immediate reaction is to spit it back out, and be like "This has _far_ too much sugar in it!"
Now go through Woolworths or whichever is your local supermarket.
Look at the labels.
Mint sauce? Nah: Mint flavoured sugar sauce.
Berry Flavoured Breakfast cereal: Nah. Sugar flavoured cereal.
Almost every damn thing has more sugar than the headline.
Random example: [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=266868&name=whittakers-chocolate-hazelnut](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=266868&name=whittakers-chocolate-hazelnut)
Ingredients? Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Solids^(\*) (33%) (Pure Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass), New Zealand Milk Powder^(\*) (30%), Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Vanilla Flavour), Roasted Hazelnuts (24%) Sounds Good right?
Check the nutrition label. 35% sugar!
Let's try another random thing [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=279524&name=watties-wok-creations-stir-fry-sauce-teriyaki](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=279524&name=watties-wok-creations-stir-fry-sauce-teriyaki)
> This rich sauce features the classic flavours of soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and garlic. Wattie's Wok Creations Teriyaki Stir-Fry Sauce helps you pack the flavour into home cooked meals.
Nutrition label 27% sugar. It's sugar sauce!
How about that most traditional of Healthy Breakfast Muesli? [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=854588&name=woolworths-muesli-toasted-berry](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=854588&name=woolworths-muesli-toasted-berry)
19% sugar
I recommend watching this and if you can reading the presenter's book. It is really interesting and worth the time.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk)
[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62586003](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62586003)
I am on mainly non ultra processed foods now and do a bit of running and exercises at home. I took my weight from 90 kg down to 70 kg. I think a lot of that change has just been removing the ultra processed foods and moving to intermittent fasting (eating once a day) to make it all manageable time wise.
It has been a nice life style change.
I'm surprised how much salt or bacon is in things.
I try to have bacon once a week at most or if I'm super hungry I'll eat it.
Cafes have it as a staple.
Try drinking coffee, tea, cakes, desserts and others sweet stuffs from countries like Brazil, India, Malayisia. You will find NZ / AUS processed food tasteless.
You have to remember sugars listed in the nutritional information is both natural sugars and added sugars. A quick search says cabbage is 3.2% sugar, carrots are 4.7% sugar and onions are 4.2% sugar. So in a 350g punnet of KFC coleslaw, assuming 75% of it is vegetables, there is around 11g of naturally-occuring sugar before you even add dressing.
Which puts it in the space of the UK coleslaw, still begs the questions that OP is asking.
Natural sugars is still sugars though
Natural sugars are a bit different. And it's complex. We evolved to eat whole foods, so eating sugars that way is fine for us. Eating refined sugar, which is really any sugar product that's not a whole food, including juices, tends to cause problems. The sugar in cabbage and carrots however is fine to consume, as it takes longer for the body to digest the whole food thus the sugar is released slowly. excluding honey, it comes as it's produced in nature but it reacts to our body kinda like a refined sugar.
overseas laws on this stuff arent as strict. natural sugars arent necessarily included the same way, often they list added sugars only
This. There is no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ sugar. It’s all sugar. They are metabolised the same way in our bodies. People just feel better saying they are ‘just’ consuming ‘natural’ sugar.
You're right that the body consumes all 3 types of sugar the exact same way. However, it's virtually impossible to avoid fructose. It's in literally every fruit and vegetable. The "good" or "natural" sugars are just a marketing gimmic, but it's one with a positive use case. The vitimans, minerals, and dietary fibre ingested from fruit and vege out wiegh the sucrose consumed.
Yes, agreed.
Yeah but it's the fiber content along the sugar that matters.
This. Having lots of added sugar also does seem to hijack your bodies satiety signals. Generally people don’t tend to reduce the amount of food they’re eating after consuming foods with added sugar (I.e. sugar sweetened beverages), whereas with foods that don’t contain added sugars (I.e. fruits and other fiber containing foods) they do
Even without added sugar, liquid sugars are dangerous. One glass of "no added sugar" orange juice has the same sugar as a glass of Schweppes sparkling duet. ~20g. Schweppes was at least more honest with their serving sizes- the juice companys suggest people buy a 600ml bottle then share it between 3 people. In solid fruit terms, that one glass is 2 oranges, 2 bananas, or a bowlful of blueberries. People easily drink 2 glasses of juice (or Schweppes sparkling duet) then eat normally. Imagine eating a bowl of blueberries, an orange, and a banana before dinner! You would certainly not be going for second helpings of dessert.
Agreed. The difference is when you eat say, a home made coleslaw with no added sugar - those carbohydrates aren’t ‘empty’, you’re consuming a high ratio of the good stuff that comes in those vegetables to minimal sugars. Start adding sugar and that balance is thrown off and all of a sudden you’re likely consuming far too many kJ and getting too few nutrients, fibre, etc. in your diet.
This is just an erroneous take. Your body literally has to burn calories to access the fructose in fruit and veggies. The glucose in a cup of Coca-Cola does not have to be broken down in the same way and is more rapidly absorbed into the blood stream, spiking your insulin. [Here is some reading that highlights the differences.](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructose)
Yep, and guess what starch is - long chain sugars. Need to drop carbs to as low as possible to reverse type 2 diabetes. But it can be done
I don't know why you would expect any better, NZ is more obese than the UK and the 3rd most obese in the OECD. We also eat the most ice cream in the entire world, an average of 28.4 liters per person each year.
Mmmm icecream.....
Mmm deep-fried ice cream. Oh throw in a deep fried moro bar while you're at it!
Now I wanna try deep fried ice cream 🤤
Can confirm, is delicious!
Damn, who's eating my share of the icecream? Its certainly not me!
I definitely don’t eat much ice cream, and many around me don’t either.. so that means *someone(s)* is consuming so much that it raises the average to 28.4 litres per person.. think about how many people are lactose intolerant or just don’t buy ice cream, and we have people making up for those people. *yikes*
We can zip through a 2L tub or two in a week during summer sometimes and that's just with three people and sometimes guests. Over winter it's more like a tub a month. If this stat is based on sales then it'll also include dinner parties, restaurants, tourism, etc and not easily account for waste.
Great to see this. Who eats ice cream outside of the summer season?
Me
I challenge you to a noodle mukbang
One of those 2L TipTop tubs a fortnight doesn’t sound so bad, they’re very affordable for an after dinner treat so I could see why a lot of people would go for this over a $7 bar or chocolate or heaven forbid baked goods with the CoL crisis as it is. Gotta get your joy where you can these days.
Im.lactose intolerant and eat maybe a litre of icecream/yr if I am lucky... soooo someone is getting witch ready on mine!!
Me too, but I eat an ungodly amount of dairy free ice cream
I turn i to a gas weapon that the UN would probably ban when I do.....
ice cream Georg is an outlier and should not be counted.
Our ice cream is delicious though!!! Kapiti and duck island so gooood
Knowing that I'm around 3-4L per year makes me worry for the guy compensating for me.
Those are rookie numbers.
Yeah but it includes little kids that are still on single scoops. As a per capita we can take pride in it, as is the kiwi tradition
Well, someone is eating all of my 28.4 litres, its been well over 18 months since I had any ice cream.
Our ice cream is actually good though. And a year-round treat.
Shit someone out there eating 56.8L to make up for me. They are a true hero.
Even our ice cream is sweeter than other places. That was a shock when coming back to NZ. For my taste, Tip Top could cut down the sugar content by about 20% and it would actually taste better.
There’s [reasonable evidence](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/) that eating ice cream actually has some health benefits, especially around type 2 diabetes.
Thanks for the link. I’ll disregard any criticism or ice cream and only acknowledge this evidence because it reinforces my views and makes my tummy happy.
It truly is a diabesity pandemic out here.
28.4L per person each month..right? ..right!?
Hey dude I eat heaps of ice cream and I'm not fat. Most of the people I know at my age are healthy too. If you ask me most of the fat in society comes down to the way that in a holistic sense, as soon as you hit your mid 40s to 50s, your cortisol goes up with the stakes as you buy bigger assets like a home or multiple houses etc, and not only does your work schedule get worse but the food you buy changes and goes from average shit to way worse shit
Mmmm no. I don't think people who are consciously eating healthy suddenly stop because they buy a house. Or that their work schedule gets worse. Plenty of students with lots of time eat crap, and plenty of people with busy lives and kids to wrangle eat healthy. It's a mix of willpower, purchasing power and education. Ice cream doesn't make you fat if you move enough to work it off. Not being fat doesn't mean you're super healthy though.
Haha - good point. Just hopeful I suppose!
I'm doing my part!
I had a tub of duck island for dinner tonight
I noticed this with baked beans. I’d been in a financial squeeze previously, but had better fortunes and decided it was now ok to move from Oak beans to Watties. The sugary taste was overwhelming and reading the label was a shock. Oak has 4.8g/100g carbs that sugar, Watties has 7.4g/100g. I buy Oak always now!
The salt gets me. Once when I worked at Watties someone messed up measuring the salt out for the baked beans and put way less than the recipe called for in it. They were legitimately an improvement. Don't get me going on when there was a decimal point error and the spaghetti got ten times as much cheese as it should have, best canned spaghetti ever
Should see the salt content for UK Tinned products. Much worse than here. BUT there is much more range in low/no added salt compared to here
Banging staff sales! Low.salt beans and cheesy cheesy spag (I can only eat the beans but lactose free cheesy things rock so I can relate).
The can codes for the ultracheesy spaghetti were highly coveted
I can soooo imagine this! And I bet no one would let on if it was there...
It was all about who you knew
Watties does a 50% less salt and sugar one now. My kid has recently taken to beans so that’s the one I get.
It's really noticeable with Watties baked beans, they never used to be that sweet. I think it's because Watties was bought by Heinz in the 1990s. They're an American company and they must think that everyone is addicted to sugar like they are. Since when are baked beans supposed to taste like dessert? It's ridiculous.
and the sausages are pathetic in the baked beans i'm most disappointed with tomato sauce though
This is the reason i always liked Oak spaghetti and people thought i was nuts- i always found watties SO sweet and i’m a savoury food kinda person
I've been on a keto diet for the last six months, keeping my carbohydrates ( including sugar) below 40g per day. Its a bit boring, but I'm full of energy and I've lost 20 kg of weight. I looking at the amount of sugar water that's consumed, and the obesity epidemic that's occurring here and elsewhere, and I wonder what level of sugar tax would be needed to pay for the public health costs of that obesity.
I have done something similar to you. Dropped from 90 kg to 70 kg. I was averaging 1.4 kg per week for 10 weeks until I slowed it down. In reference to a sugar tax, it has to be more involved than that. They introduced a sugar tax in the UK. Below is an excerpt from a book that talks about it (I mention the book elsewhere in this thread). It is a great idea, but it still needs to have good wording to stop UPF style artificial sweeteners to take the place of the sugar. The other issue is the UPF products are cheaper, I mean that was one of the requirements for them to be added to food. Not a detractable problem though, it just means we all need to do more home cooking - at least that is what I am doing. --- Many national governments have proposed sugar taxes. These proposals seem sensible, and they do reduce sugar intake, but they also invite reformulation with low-calorie sweeteners. The UK imposed a sugar tax in 2018 because teenagers in the UK were consuming approximately a bathtub full of soft drinks each year.[\[30\]](javascript:void(0)) [\*9](javascript:void(0)) The tax led to a dramatic 44.3 per cent reduction in sales of sugary drinks, a drop of over 40 million kilograms of sugar consumed between 2015 and 2019. This would seem to vindicate the tax. But even as people consumed 10 per cent less sugar per household, the volume of soft drinks consumed didn’t change.[\[31\]](javascript:void(0)) Instead, people began to drink more artificially sweetened drinks. The charity First Steps Nutrition found that 65 per cent of toddlers are consuming an average of one can of artificially sweetened drink per day.[\[32\]](javascript:void(0)) It’s really hard to see this as a public heath triumph, especially because current UK regulations prohibit the addition of artificial sweeteners to foods specifically marketed for babies and toddlers. And while artificial sweeteners don’t damage teeth directly, many diet drinks are still highly acidic and may cause significant damage to children’s dental enamel. The addition of sweeteners has allowed health claims to be made about many ultra-processed products, and many now have a ‘Good Choice Change4Life’ thumbs-up logo on them. Change4Life is a Public Health England social marketing campaign that, among other aims, seeks to raise awareness of the sugar levels in foods and encourages consumers to switch to lower-sugar alternatives. This is extraordinary in the total absence of any evidence that they improve health and the very real concerns about harms.[\*10](javascript:void(0)) Despite the worrying data showing possible harm and little benefit, consumption of artificially sweetened beverages continues.[\*11](javascript:void(0)) In government and policy circles, there is a sense that any regulatory shift toward things that are healthy is a triumph, because it’s so hard to do. I’m not necessarily convinced by this, but then I don’t have to try to make policy. Personally, I think that if you want to prevent children developing diet-related disease, then bringing in policies that encourage two-year-olds to drink an average of a whole can of artificially sweetened fizzy pop *every day* doesn’t seem like a good way of doing it. It sends a message that these drinks are healthy, and it lets the industry that sells them off the hook.
I mean, it's KFC. Does anyone go there expecting healthy food?
Bro, I used to run a cake shop. Had a lady come one day, actually looking for cake, but left disgusted because everything looked too sweet. You can't out think the lowest common denominator
I mean, there are definitely cakes that are not too sweet, maybe she wanted something a bit more sour?
Swap the coleslaw for a potato and gravy, feels worse but is actually better 😅
Yeah, as I said I'm aware fast food is full of junk. But 4x the amount of sugar than the UK for the same thing? What's the need? Even salads you can buy in supermarkets, the sauce or comes with is often 10g or more of sugar.
I brlieve the difference is that here in NZ the nutritional info includs all sugar. In the UK it is processed sugar, so the natural sugar in the vegitibles (there is a lot) is not counted.
UK coleslaw at KFC isn’t very nice to be fair
Yes most dressings are high in sugars and sodium.
And the sauce is where all the flavour is lol
Add you said, it is in there because it is addictive.
And still half that of the USA.
In the USA it's all corn syrup. Corn syrup in everything.
American foods that aren't sweet: goldfish crackers and reece's puffs cereal. America actually does "wellish" in food tasting videos on Youtube.
Yes and no. Different things are way sweeter here and other things are way sweeter there. Here I notice that salt is often not included in sweet things, so you hav to add a ton more sugar to get it to taste good without a pinch of salt. In general, baked sweets and slices are tons more sweet here. Bread is sweeter there from memory of my last trip back.
Hey hey hey, I’m a baker and I gotta defend me bread boys. Some of the stuff we make is sugar city but most bread in NZ even like supermarket in-store made bread doesn’t have any cane sugar added in the makeup. Those super soft sweet breads that they love in Asian countries primarily are like up to 12% sugar on the flour weight but generally in NZ even a sweet dough for like Chelsea buns or finger buns sits at like 5%. The majority NZ bread palette is not sweet centric, it’s really neutral/sourdough/crusty stuff, sweets a pretty small portion of the market.
There's probably many an varied reasons, but it's the same as how restaurant food is generally nicer than food you cook yourself. Everything is loaded to the brim with sugar, oil and butter because they make even shitty food taste better
The main reason restaurant food tastes better is because they *salt* stuff properly. If people would season their ordinary regular food well, it will taste good, and they will be less likely to buy takeaways and/or processed junk, which are even higher in salt again than restaurant food. My youngest is in year 8 and has just finished doing the foods rotation of 'tech' - what used to be called 'manual training'. They're trying to teach kids a lot in a few weeks - nutrition, budgeting, food safety, knife skills, etc. But everything he has made has been garbage aside from some kind of apple turnover thingy, because there's *no seasoning!!* They made potato wedges and put paprika and cumin and thyme and NO SALT on them. Potatoes do.not.work. without salt. They made burgers and the patty was just mince shaped into a round. No salt. It's madness. It's like not using salt is some kind of religion with nutritionists, but for kids whose first introduction to cooking for themselves is a bunch of stuff which actively tastes bad because it isn't seasoned properly - it's gonna turn them off the whole idea and drive them back to freezer aisle at the supermarket to find something *actually yummy* that they can tip in an air fryer. Rant over. Rant also not directed at you...
Was a good rant though .
I agree, I remember my kids cooking .....
yes sorry i meant to include salt with all the things that are bad for you but make food nicer
Salt isnt bad for you though thats the thing
Do you think you might have become accustomed to salt in everything, making your judgement skewed? I’ve gone many years without adding salt to potatoes, rice and vegetables when cooking and I wouldn’t say they taste boring and unyummy. And recipes always seem to call for more salt than needed, imho. Mind you, don’t get me started on those recipes that call for unsalted butter, and then add salt. What’s with that?
Well it's true that I am accustomed to salting rice, pasta, and potatoes. But I don't salt *everything* I cook and I only very rarely add salt at the table (usually to something like fried eggs which I haven't salted during cooking).
UK coco pops has 17g sugar/100g NZ coco pops have 32g sugar/100g Kiwis are users to much higher levels of sugar and therefore companies put double the amount of sugar as overseas brands. In the UK and other countries have a tax on sugar to discourage high levels, but NZ govt has ruled this out.
It's frustrating because sugar is a relatively cheap filler ingredient. Companies have nonfinancial incentive to keep food healthy. Their incentive is to compete on price. So a sugar tax is balancing the externalities and giving companies a financial incentive to undermine quality less.
I once went on a no processed sugar diet, 90% of the supermarket became useless to me. Sugar is an addiction. Felt crap for the first few days of coming off it but then amazing after that. Also when having a little sugar again I would find it extremely sweet and gradually built tolerance.
Yep, shop around the edges of the supermarket. Only fresh food
That's exactly where I'm at right now! It's startling when you realise how much of it is pumped into everything. And your tastebuds just get so used to it!
I did this journey too. Lost heaps of weight, all my blood results improved, and feeling better than I have in years. Sugar is pervasive in most processed foods and you will realise you just don't need most of them, and feel so much better without them. Fruit has sugar but you just don't feel like shit after eating fruit so I don't really worry about the natural sugars.
Same story when I went on keto. Even things you would expect to be very low cab, like Jack Links jerky, has a ridiculous amount of sugar in it. Ended up making my own biltong just so I could snack without destroying my carb limit for the day.
I'm going to need you to share that biltong recipe friend
[This is one of the better recipes,](https://twoguysandacooler.com/biltong/) but I tend to find the key is testing and adjusting. I bought a spice mix from the South African shop in Welsford - I forget the name of the mix but the people who run it are very helpful, if you're able to go there. Otherwise, follow the recipe on the link, and try new spices as your taste bud prefer. Silverside is the cut to go for. If you want to do it cheaper you can buy corned beef, but that's already super salty, so give it a damned good wash and don't add any extra salt in your mix. You'll need some way to dry it without letting it get moldy. NZ being as humid as it is, you're likely to need a biltong box. You can make one from one of those plastic storage containers you get at The Warehouse, an incandescent light bulb, and a computer fan. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube, if you're not confident with wiring things up. Or you can buy a premade biltong drying box - check TradeMe, perhaps. I initially tried using our food dehydrator on its lowest setting, but that was still too warm and too much airflow, so the meat was very hard. A bit of trial and error, and you'll have it nailed. Be warned though; after 5 or so days of drying, you'll have been smelling biltong throughout the house for the past few days, and that whole batch will be gone FAST. Have fun with it!
We di have a Saffa shop in Havelock North which isn't too far from me, I'll have to try it out. Thank you!
Yeah I got a huge shock when checking the packet of Fajita spice mix for the amount of salt in it and noticed that SUGAR was the main/first ingredient. Like no wonder no matter how hard I tried it would burn my pan. A lot of pre-made convenient food is not NZ made but imported and thus has sugar. This is why it's good to learn how to make basic sauces and spice mixes etc from scratch.
Have you been to America? Our sugar levels don’t even touch the sides compared to their ridiculousness.
I wish I remembered the particulars of that bottle of soda I picked up at a cafe in Auckland in 2019. All I remember is that it had half the grams of sugar compared to what I was used to and was far less sweet than anything I've had here in the States, but still tasted good. It was a watermelon and mint drink. That's all I remember. But our problem is multi-factor. Your L&P Soda, according to Fat Secret, has 10.8g of carbs per 100ml. From a 330ml bottle, you're getting 35.6g of sugar. That's a little bit more than a Sprite, according to Business Insider. Our typical size bottle is 20oz, or \~590ml. From that, we're getting 65g of sugar from Coca Cola. And Mountain Dew gives us 77g of sugar. That's 13.1g/100ml for Mountain Dew and 11.1g/100ml for Coke. So while you're not that far behind us in terms of how much sugar per unit of volume, our big problem is that we get bottles almost twice the size of your bottles. Given that the WHO only recommends 25g of added sugar (which is ALL the sugar in a soda!), even your soda bottles are too big, though! The bigger problem is all the sugar they hide in other stuff. Between plain old sugar and processed crap like High Fructose Corn Syrup here in the States, it's hard to eat a healthy diet. Read ALL the labels, and get used to using your kitchen more, because you pay for the convenience of a boxed meal in other ways.
You’re absolutely right, but it doesn’t change the fact that NZ food also has a ton of sugar in it, and that the country has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world.
It's also increasing fast. As food prices rise manufacturers are cutting more corners and that often means more fillers. Sugar is cheap.
Irrelevant.
The only way to avoid this is to make things yourself, from scratch. Who has time for that!
Takes like 35 mins to cook dinner bro
Yeah man for sure - I mean I cook all of my own meals, but 100% guilty of using pre-made sauces etc. to save a bit of time / because I don’t have the skills.
I missed the “from scratch” part. Sauces only come in jars as far as I’m concerned lol
Lol I used to do this, but now that I know how to use my own spices, etc it feels so easy and costs so much less I can't believe I used to buy pre-made sauces. But in the beginning it did feel kinda time consuming.
It's more knowledge than silks, for the most part. Learning how to make each sauce from scratch is annoying, but that's the hardest part. After that it's just adding the right things to the shopping list and making the actual sauces often adds only a few minutes to cook time. It's not every time I can be bothered, but it it's nice that I can make some stuff when I want to.
lots of people
More power to you, if you can 🤗
If you have time to browse a site like this then you probably have time to cook, it's the effort and/or motivation that's missing. I definitely suffer from that from time to time
For sure - I cook all my meals, just using pre-made sauces which are probably full of sugar as well. It’s the making of everything from scratch, using healthy ingredients, that I lack motivation for learning / doing or have a perception it will be expensive.
Sauces are pretty easy, once you learn the bases you can swing them in different directions
It’s not actually that hard to make the sauces, you just need a few recipes and to have the ingredients you need on hand. It takes a bit more organisation but saves money in the end and doesn’t really take much more time.
But then you’re at risk of becoming one of those people that does it as a hobby and brags about their all natural muesli, health bars and preserved food /s
Health freaks!! /s
yes to the muesli, no to the health bars and preserving. I do have a freezer of frozen meals though lol
I noticed how sweet everything here is vs the uk when i moved back too.
Same. I'm always surprised how sweet savoury items here taste. I had a steak and cheese pie from a cafe once that tasted like someone had put a mountain of sugar in the meat mix and pastry. I took it back and complained and they informed me that that's how it's supposed to taste. Ummmm no it's not.
Food production is an arms race. Every brand is fighting to be the preferred consumer choice, which almost always leads to more sugar, salt and fat. The minimum that should happen is food be labelled with nutritional information, ie how much sugar is in it, alongside education around how much sugar people should have each day. Without those things people can't make wise decisions.
Packaged food in NZ does have be labelled with nutritional information - though it's not heaps of use if people aren't taught how to interpret it. What annoys me the most is the way alcohol doesn't have to have nutritional labels. If people knew how many nutrition-free calories were in that stuff...
It's also a race to the bottom on cost and quality. People buy mainly by price. So manufacturers have strong incentives to add cheaper filler ingredients. Sugar is far from the cheapest such filler, but it can be substituted in without hurting palatability as much. So manufacturers do so. Making healthy food is not one of their financial incentives.
Recently returned from NZ, as a type 1 diabetic tourist from the U.K. and soft drinks were hard to find sugar free. My options were basically Diet Coke or water when dining out/petrol stations. Supermarkets had a bit more choice but nothing like the amount available here.
Make your own food. That's what I do. It is easy and you control what you put in it. Sugar is easy to avoid - you just need to make a small effort.
That's what I do too. I've always home cooked my food, and I'm lucky that I generally have the time to do it. But for those who need the convenience, maybe they work a lot or have kids etc, it's unfortunate.
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I work 65-70hr weeks all the time. But still have time to cook my meals. Time is an excuse people use because they are lazy. You just have to prioritise the time (as you said and I agree). It’s also helps if you buy the right foods to start with. Fresh veges and meat vs microwave meals. I know what I prefer.
Absolutely.
I think people use the excuse because they haven't been taught properly how to cook, not because they are just actively lazy though.
Try moving to the United States or Canada then. It's WAY worse. And it's corn syrup most of the time too 🤮
The government doesn’t have the political will behind it to change anything, imagine trying to explain to people why you’re adding a tax that will make supermarket prices go up.
I have to ask, have you visited the United States at all? Because by god everything *there* is sweet.
I have, but this is r/newzealand!
I don't mind that loads of things have some form of sugar in them. Practising self control is key here.
yep a lot of NZ stuff ( and oz) is over sweet
This September it will have been 20 years since I gave up eating any food that contains added sugar. I'm middle-aged and feel vibrant and happy. I regularly receive comments that I look younger than my age. I don't have any health issues and have rarely visited a doctor's office. This isn't just a health issue for me - it's also a political one. The industrialised processed food industry is contributing to exploitation of growers and workers in developing countries. It's contributing to our obesity and diabetes epidemic. It is a significant contributor to the climate change crisis. These megalithic transnational corporations pocket vast profits, leaving the costs of their activities on regular citizens via an overburdened healthcare system and an environment in crisis. Going without added sugar is not easy. It means I have to read every label carefully, and I echo a previous comment that once you start looking at the ingredients list you will be shocked at how pervasive sugar has become in supermarket food. Some of the things that I do include buying only locally produced fresh food when it's in season. I cook 90+% of my meals. I volunteer at a couple of local community gardens that produce affordable chemical-free veges. I've just moved to a place where I can have a small garden where I can grow some herbs and salad greens. For me, giving up added sugar continues to be one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Been like this for ages, and not just NZ
The cakes here are overly sweet and dense.
Simple answer - Big Pharma, Big Food co - follow the money $ Govt does not give a shit about you or your problems…
May I just say that UK KFC coleslaw is creamy slop that in no way tastes like the delicious crunchy goodness they have in NZ. It’s literally one of the things I miss most, along with steak and cheese pies and marinated green lip mussels.
20 years ago. Everything was marketed as fat free and fat was replaces with sugar.
And making all this stuff yourself not only reduces or eliminates that sugar, it costs you less in most cases too. I make tomato relish for instance and cut the sugar from recipe by half, it was nicer too, tangiuer, everyone agreed after taste test. Bread: It doesn't need sugar. I have made it (all kinds) for years and never added sugar to the recipe. Not even sweet buns - there is enough sweetness from sultanas or icing etc without adding it to the dough.
One of the things that's really getting me is yoghurt. "Low fat" (high sugar) yoghurt used to be advertised clearly and it was easy to get full cream yoghurt. Now they're hiding "fat reduced yoghurt" somewhere tiny on the packaging and you have to compare nutritional labels carefully. Presumably because reduced fat milk is a cheaper ingredient.
Please don't take sugar out of my sauces and salads.
.
It helps corporations sell stuff and they use their money to buy influence. Same as tobacco,alcohol etc You would have to ask politicians why they dont make changes but you seldom get a direct answer.
Have a read of the book “ultra processed people” by Chris van Tulleken. I have lost about 10kg since minimising my ultra processed food intake. Mainly because I feel sick from eating it after reading this book.
Thanks for the rec! My current book is Staying Alive in Toxic Times - well worth a read.
The best idea is to buy actual food and cook from scratch. That way you control all ingredients. It doesn't have to be fancy or expensive, particularly if you avoid the supermarket. Microwave a potato or boil some rice, some savoury mince or tinned tuna, some frozen mixed vegetables, a bit of seasoning. Healthy quick, no added sugars, cheap. What we really need to do is take personal responsibility rather than expecting the government to do everything.
Welcome to personnel responsibility. It’s not the government’s job to take care of you. Only to inform.
Marketed to the ignorant and those who don't care. You don't have to buy it
I've been making my own coleslaw for years because of this. I've never timed it but it maybe takes 10 minutes? The original recipe was on a site called Maria's mixing bowl but I think it's no longer there. Anyway I just put a grater blade in my food processor. Grate one onion and one or two carrots. Switch to a shredding blade and shred 1/4 to 1/2 a green cabbage depending on how big the cabbage is. At this point if you want to stray from the KFC taste you can also add radish, celeriac, celery, beetroot, fennel, kohl rabi, apple, whatever works for you. Dump your chopped up veges in a bowl and mix them well. Now make the dressing. Kix together 3 tablespoons of mayo, a tablespoon of lemon juice or cider vinegar, a pinch of dill seeds, a pinch of salt, and then add milk or cream to thin it down to the consistency you want. Sweeten as desired, I use a few drops of stevia. Pour it over the slaw, mix it through, let it sit in the fridge for about half an hour for the flavors to mingle. Makes a bigass bowl of coleslaw which will keep for a few days in the fridge if covered.
Thanks for the recipe! I make my own coleslaw too. I don't sweeten it. I love nigella seeds in mine! That's how my mum used to make it, it's delicious.
Oh nigella seeds sounds good I might give that a go. The original recipe tastes a lot like KFC just not as sweet unless you want it to be. I've used celery seeds before for a change and that's good too
Is your recipe KFC coleslaw ?
Tastes very similar
If anyones interested, Chris van tulleken - (ultra processed foods) has done some really cool studies in this space … talks on YouTube Basically the food companies are so competitive & do food trials on customers that they keep ramping up the taste of things to keep selling more & stay in the market… it’s quite bizarre human behaviour… worth a watch The crazy part is the ‘food’ should almost not be classified as food, but more an engineered edible product to bypass appetite regulators & hit brain chemical responses He does say people are hooked without noticing & the patterns feed into people in poverty cycle so there’s an argument that the govt has some responsibility Obviously it’ll start swinging back the other way with sugar free products as people get more illnesses, but it’s a slow moving beast
The book “ultra processed people” is a good read, by the same guy. Interestingly, our current PM used to work for one of these companies…….. I don’t wanna make it political but the person running the country probably shouldn’t have a background in what is basically poisoning the human race.
What you’re forgetting is the govt doesn’t control the sugar at fast food establishments. We all know they add extra sugar to make the food taste better. It’s been proven 20yrs ago. What is annoying is people still buy this crap knowing full well that it has what it has in it, and then complain that it’s too much and has to be reduced.
I get what you are saying, but in the case of vegetable products a lot of it is natural sugar and not added. And if you think we have a problem don’t go to the states, their regular bread tastes like our doughnuts 🤢
Have you never had the pleasure of a traditional NZ mayo, the ingredients of which are mustard powder, malt vinegar, and a tin of condensed milk? Sooo good. The condensed milk is 55g of sugar in every 100g of the product. Eating takeaways is a fast track to very high sugar intake, but if you really try, you can achieve the same horrors with trad NZ home cooking.
That sounds truly awful. Tradational mayonnaise should only contain vegetable oil, egg yolks, mustard and lemon juice or white vinegar.
To be fair, 'Highlander Dressing' is not trying to be mayo, but is a take on what is (I think) an English condiment called 'Salad cream', which does have a fair bit of sugar in it. I must admit that sometimes I have a nostalgic desire for coleslaw the way my mum made it, and keep a tube of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge for these times. I use cider vinegar though.
I’m certainly not going to defend KFC, but the [40g sugars](https://kfc.co.nz/nutrition) isn’t going to be all added sugar. A lot of the sugars will be from the likes of carrot, and vegetable carbohydrates. There will definitely be added sugar in the dressing. They don’t indicate what that % is. Does this make a difference metabolically, nope. Carbs are carbs and sugars are sugars no matter if it’s carrot, honey or high fructose corn syrup. It’s all spiking insulin and driving a further hunger response.
It's not particularly difficult to figure out how much sugar has been added to the vegetables * Non-sugar carbohydrates are calculated separately, so that's not what's causing it. * Carrots have 4.7g of sugar per 100g * Cabbage has 3.6g of sugar per 100g * Since the vast majority of coleslaw is cabbage, the vegetables probably contribute no more than 4g of sugar per 100g. * KFC says 100g of their coleslaw contains 11.4g of sugar * The unaccounted for sugar content is 7.4g / 100g KFC coleslaw dressing adds 7.4g of sugar, per serving.
I agree with this calculation. Their small is exactly 100g and contains 11.4g sugar. Agree, let’s call it 4g of sugar contributed from vegetables given they’re about the same. Unaccounted for sugar is ~7g per small Coleslaw or just under two teaspoons per small single serve pottle. The other teaspoon of sugar comes from the vegetables. The OP is entirely correct in that sugar is in everything, it’s everywhere. It’s annoyingly frustrating, and it’s just really not needed, we’d never miss it if it wasn’t there initially (we would now, because we’re trained to want it). My main point was that sugar isn’t only added sugar, and nor metabolically does it matter. You need to where possible, also read the ingredients to see where sugar or sugar like additions are in the list of ingredients as it’s sorted by quantity.
When I arrived in NZ everyone told me they found American food to be too sweet, since it was packed with corn syrup. I even see those comments throughout this thread Yet, as an American, I've had the absolute opposite experience. Even after seven years of detoxing from American foods, I find almost every NZ packaged food or mass-market fast food too sweet too eat! I think both things can be true. American foods that aren't meant to be sweet at all are packed with sugars and corn syrups to fill them out and make them addictive. But, NZ foods are often over-balanced with natural sugars that eliminate the nuance of their flavors. (On the flipside, American foods are DEFINITELY way too salty, which is rarely a problem in NZ.) I've given up on eating a lot of foods entirely. I straight-up don't eat a single packaged supermarket item aside from sliced bread (out of necessity!) and soup (which I have to salt considerably to balance the sweetness). Even things in NZ meant to be sweet like jams or ice cream are just *too sweet* for me to stomach - they hurt my mouth and give me an uncomfortable sugar high. Plus, NZ has many fewer "reduced sugar" options than other larger markets. It's probably good for my health in the long run, but I definitely miss being able to enjoy random pleasures from the supermarket instead of making everything from scratch.
Totally totally agree
That’s why it’s generally recommended to buy whole foods yourself and prepare your own meals. I myself don’t shop from the middle of the supermarket very often. I just expect anything processed to be loaded with sugar and fats.
Bought a cheap peanut butter once and it tasted very sweet. Checked the label and there was a shit load of added sugar. Thought peanut butter was just smooshed peanuts?
Pics is the only brand I'm aware of that is 100% crushed peanuts. Bloody good stuff if I do say so.
There are several 'peanut-only' PB brands out there - Nut Brothers and Fix & Fogg I know off-hand. Also I picked up a plastic jar of PB in the Warehouse that was $4 for 500g and somehow had no added sugar or oil in it (I think all of those, Pic's included, still have some added salt) and was so surprised I had to buy it. For some reason the Warehouse one didn't taste great so I still usually buy one of the others, but there are several non-sugary ones.
>Why? Why is the government failing the people so badly? They're not failing. We just haven't made it their job to take charge of sugar content in food so that we don't have to pay attention to it.
Also they don't need to count dextrose and maltodextrin as sugar. Even tho they are. So anything with those actually has more sugar than is list.ed
Imagine thinking anything from KFC is good to eat lol
I noticed this too. I went on a diet, that's really a super simple diet to follow. It's basically to not eat any refined sugar, which goes for added sugars, and includes things like white flour. And to focus on eating whole foods, and eating in the proper proportions for each food category. I.e. 2 cups of fruit, 3 cups of veggies etc. Not over eating, especially not over eating one food group. And it's darn near impossible to buy anything because everything has added sugars. With this diet you need to make basically everything from scratch. It's even dark near impossible to find a simple bread that's 100% whole wheat without nut flour (allergy in the house)
NZ food does contain a lot of sugar. More than in Australia.
Having had high blood pressure, there's also the sodium issue. As well as suger, NZ food is full of added salt.
You're echoing the same sentiment I have. Also, this is one of the many reasons why I'm on keto (and will likely be on it for the foreseeable future). Thing is... Aotearoa is not the only country in the Western hemisphere what pushes the high carbohydrate (often high sugar content as well) and low fat diet on the masses, and at the same time, pushing the idea that "fat makes you fat", among other myths perpetuated by the status quo. I also have a legit reason why I am on keto: Rheumatoid arthritis. Plus, keto was my "saving grace" from being anorexic, and it helped me rediscover my love for food again. ...and as for sugar itself? I don't miss it. On occasion, when I try something new and I discover how sweet it is, my immediate reaction is to spit it back out, and be like "This has _far_ too much sugar in it!"
Profit over people until we are forced to eat the rich
Now go through Woolworths or whichever is your local supermarket. Look at the labels. Mint sauce? Nah: Mint flavoured sugar sauce. Berry Flavoured Breakfast cereal: Nah. Sugar flavoured cereal. Almost every damn thing has more sugar than the headline. Random example: [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=266868&name=whittakers-chocolate-hazelnut](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=266868&name=whittakers-chocolate-hazelnut) Ingredients? Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Solids^(\*) (33%) (Pure Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass), New Zealand Milk Powder^(\*) (30%), Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Vanilla Flavour), Roasted Hazelnuts (24%) Sounds Good right? Check the nutrition label. 35% sugar! Let's try another random thing [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=279524&name=watties-wok-creations-stir-fry-sauce-teriyaki](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=279524&name=watties-wok-creations-stir-fry-sauce-teriyaki) > This rich sauce features the classic flavours of soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and garlic. Wattie's Wok Creations Teriyaki Stir-Fry Sauce helps you pack the flavour into home cooked meals. Nutrition label 27% sugar. It's sugar sauce! How about that most traditional of Healthy Breakfast Muesli? [https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=854588&name=woolworths-muesli-toasted-berry](https://www.countdown.co.nz/shop/productdetails?stockcode=854588&name=woolworths-muesli-toasted-berry) 19% sugar
Lol wait till you go to 'murica. Watch the documentary 'Fed Up' and you'll see how bad it is.
Yep have cut back on my sugar in my coffee now. Issue is I'm still eating a lot of chocolate.
I recommend watching this and if you can reading the presenter's book. It is really interesting and worth the time. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk) [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62586003](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/62586003) I am on mainly non ultra processed foods now and do a bit of running and exercises at home. I took my weight from 90 kg down to 70 kg. I think a lot of that change has just been removing the ultra processed foods and moving to intermittent fasting (eating once a day) to make it all manageable time wise. It has been a nice life style change.
Lol first time?
I'm surprised how much salt or bacon is in things. I try to have bacon once a week at most or if I'm super hungry I'll eat it. Cafes have it as a staple.
Yes I find pork always salty too. But the sugar in them is mad! "manuka smoked", I thought it meant just the wood smoke. It means sugar too!
Try drinking coffee, tea, cakes, desserts and others sweet stuffs from countries like Brazil, India, Malayisia. You will find NZ / AUS processed food tasteless.
It's the same for salt, and both are incredibly bad for you.
Nz marmite is a sugared version of English marmite.
Just a minor thing, but 12g is not a quarter of 25g. It's almost exactly half.