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We've always liked sweet foods
Not so long ago our ancestors would have eaten wild berries and fruit for the natural sugar they contain. Sugar was hard to get, and eating too much wasn't a problem. Food and drink companies know
that we love the taste of sugar, so they make all sorts of sugary foods,
which we're only too happy to buy. And we don't have to go far to find
them, every corner shop, petrol station, tuck shop and supermarket has
plenty of cheap, sweet snacks on display.
King Size chocolate bars look like great value for money. You can pay as little as 10p extra and get lots more chocolate - sometimes over 50% more! The picture shows King Size confectionery from three leading snack companies, but this is very common - most companies offer food in larger portions. The main ingredients in milk chocolate are sugar and fat. These ingredients are relatively cheap - so it's easy for manufacturers to offer you extra chocolate at a 'bargain' price. Products get bigger and bigger when companies use this as a marketing technique to get 'one up' on their competitors. Bigger products seem like good value, but think about all the extra fat, sugar and calories you're eating. Unless you do a lot of exercise to burn it off, your body may decide to store that extra energy as body fat, leading to bulges where you might not want them. Health experts and food companies have become concerned that people might eat too much when they choose bigger portions. All of the confectionery companies whose products appear in the photograph have now said they will control portion sizes, in order to help their customers to control the amount of fat and sugar they consume.
Start your day the sugary way The main ingredient in breakfast cereal is usually grain, such as maize (sweetcorn), wheat or rice. The grains are typically mixed with added sugar and salt and a sprinkling of vitamins. You may have noticed that cereal companies are quick to boast about the added vitamins. They don't often boast about the added sugar - you have to check for the sugar content by looking in the small print. Take a look at the breakfast cereals shown below. Which one do you think would be most likely to be chosen by a child? What else do you notice about the children's breakfast cereal?
Breakfast cereals targeted at children (with film characters or free toys) often contain much more sugar than breakfast cereals targeted at grown-ups.
There are some exceptions. Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, Rice Krispies, Ready Brek and porridge are all low sugar cereals, and tasty too. You can top up the taste by adding chopped up banana or other fruit. If you do add extra sugar, go easy! Some other manufacturers
and supermarkets have also started to sell reduced-sugar alternatives
to the most sugary brands. Sugar can be used to fuel cars!
The car being filled up in the picture is in Brazil. In parts of India, Brazil and America, sugar from sugar cane and maize plants is fermented into alcohol for use as fuel for cars. It is sometimes blended with petrol to give a fuel called Gasohol.
Some drinks contain so much sugar they might as well be called liquid sweets. It's a very common problem. Below are just a few examples of different types of sugary drinks, showing you how much sugar they contain and comparing the sugar content to sweets. These examples are from a survey conducted in March 2004 for The Food Magazine.
Sugar adds up easily during the day Sugar is added to so many foods and drinks that it is very easy to eat too much.
A teenage girl aged between 11 and 14 should aim to eat no more than 54g sugar in one day (just under 11 teaspoons). Girls are often a bit smaller than boys, so don't need quite as much energy. But look how easy it would be to eat too much in just one or two products:
Is there sugar in your savoury food?
Sugar is a cheap ingredient that can be added to give a product flavour. It also helps to preserve food - to make it last longer on the supermarket shelf. There might not
be very much sugar in savoury food - perhaps one or two teaspoons in your
meal. But it all adds up - especially if you consume a lot of sugary snacks
and drinks as well. The mystery
of the disappearing sugar!
Advice for a healthy diet is that people should generally eat more starchy carbohydrates like bread, rice and pasta, and less sugary carbohydrates, like those found in soft drinks and sweets. How can you tell which is which? Most labels declare the sugar content on the nutrition label. Some products simply boast that they contain 'glucose', which sounds like a healthy ingredient. However, glucose is just one type of sugar.
Glucose, sucrose, fructose and maltose are all types of sugar. You can spot them in the ingredients list because they all end with the letters 'ose'. This ingredients list is from a chocolate bar. The label says 'charged with glucose' on the front, and the nutrition label does not declare sugar. Only by looking at the ingredients list can you see that it actually contains sugar six times.
Click here to download activity sheets on the subject of fat, salt and sugar.
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Humans
are attracted to sweet tastes for the same reasons that ants are attracted
to picnics, and wasps are attracted to jam. If something tastes sweet,
it probably contains 
Do
you want to eat like a king?
Sugar
has so much energy (
Soft
drinks or liquid sweets? 
A
teenage boy aged between 11 and 14 should aim to eat no more than 65g
sugar in one day (13 teaspoons).
Sugar
is sometimes found in unexpected places. For instance, savoury products
like pasta sauce and baked beans often contain added sugar. 
You
need to be a walking dictionary to read some food labels. When you look
at the nutrition panel, you'll usually find the word '
