 All right, the four ways they lie about sugar in their food products and how to read food labels. Even if you think you're eating a squeaky clean healthy diet, many food companies have found ways to sneak sugar into many supposedly healthy foods. That's why in today's episode, I'm going to share the four ways you're being lied to about sugar in food products and how you can properly read food labels to get the most out of your diet and improve your health. All right, number one, first things first. To find the real amount of sugar, don't look at the grams of sugar on the back of the label. Although this would seem like the logical place to find out the total amount of sugar, it's absolutely completely wrong. The correct way to look is to look at the total carbohydrates and then subtract the fiber to find out the real sugar content. Now fun, if you take that number and divide it by four because there's four grams of carbohydrate and one teaspoon of sugar, you can actually figure out how many teaspoons of sugar you're eating in that serving of the product. So let me give you some fun examples. So here's a plain bagel, healthy, right? I look at the label and it says, total sugars four grams. Okay, let's do the math. Divide by four, that's one teaspoon of sugar in a bagel. Not bad. In fact, they admit that they added a teaspoon of sugar to each bagel, but not so fast. If we look at total carbohydrate, it's 48 grams of carbohydrate. And if we look at fiber, it's two grams of fiber. So believe it or not, in this healthy bagel with only one teaspoon of supposed sugar, there's 46 grams of carbohydrate. And that by four, believe it or not, there's over 11 teaspoons of sugar hidden in this healthy bagel. Let's take another example. Now, here's something really healthy. It looks like it's made from brown rice, oops, quinoa, oops, flax seeds, wow, okay, that's okay, sesame seeds, that's okay. That sounds really healthy. So we look and it says serving size is 12 crackers. We look at sugars, total sugars, zero, man, that's what I want to eat, oops. Total carbohydrate, 20 grams. Dietary fiber, three grams. So that's 17 grams of carbohydrates per serving, 12 crackers. Divide by four, that's four teaspoons of sugar per serving. Four teaspoons in that healthy product. Now this one's a no-brainer. Anyone who actually thinks that cereal is good for you and is a health food, please think again. But let's make sure, let's read the label. Okay, so believe it or not, in this entire box there are seven servings of cereal and the serving is just over a cup of cereal. Now if any of you have kids or have eaten cereal in the past, no one actually eats just a cup of cereal. But let's play the math anyhow. Okay, so it says here, total sugars per serving is 12 grams. 12 grams, wait a minute, that's three teaspoons that they'll admit to. And they'll admit to the fact that they added three teaspoons of sugar per serving, but not so fast. There's 34 grams of carbohydrates, two grams of fiber, so there's 32 grams of sugar per serving, divide by four. There's eight teaspoons of sugar that you're feeding your kid every morning, not to mention if you put a cup of milk on it, you're actually going to add another three teaspoons of sugar. That folks is more than a candy bar. You're feeding your kids candy bars. Let's do one more just for fun. You said when I was a runner, I used to devour these. And an energy bar, energy, says right there, okay, total sugars, 17 grams, including 15 grams of added sugar. So that's four teaspoons of sugar that they admit to putting in there, but not so fast. Carbohydrates is 40 grams, minus five grams of fiber, so there's 35 grams of sugar. That's divide by four, and so there's basically almost nine grams of sugar in this energy bar. Second, aside from calculating numbers, you think that they're going to tell you where the sugar is. But remember, if you look at the ingredients, they'll hide sugar in many ways. Words like glucose, words like fructose, words like sucrose, sucrose is table sugar. How about agave nectar, malt or maple syrup, molasses, honey, high fructose corn syrup. They're all words for sugar. Now food companies also lie to you about sugar content by putting large amounts in food where you least expect it. So that's why don't look at the sugar on the label. I can't tell you how many of my diabetics make this mistake whenever they're buying a product because you've been told that that's where to look for the sugar. You've been told that's where to look because the sugar is hiding elsewhere. It's actually one of the first tricks a magician does. Look over here, don't look over here at what I'm doing. As I mentioned before, beware of portion sizes. The portion size in so many of these packaged foods, particularly in plastic bags or cellophane bags, you're going to eat far more than that portion size. I was at Costco this weekend looking at kombucha that's available for sale. The portion size of one single jar is actually a half of that bottle. No one's going to eat a half of that bottle. They're going to drink the whole thing. There are actually 29 grams of sugar per portion, which means there was 58 grams of sugar in that bottle. Divide by four, it's far more than a soft drink. And yet you think, oh, I'm only going to have half and no, you're going to have the whole thing. Finally, what are you going to do instead? Have yourself something healthy. For instance, a chocolate bar made with sorghum. This thing I made to taste very much like a Nestle's Crunch or Hershey's Crackle Bar. The great thing about it is there's no lectants. And take a look at the label. There's 17 grams of carbohydrates, but there's eight grams of dietary fiber. And eight of those carbohydrates are sugar alcohols, which you don't suggest. So there's one gram of sugar in this bar. And all the rest are fiber that feeds your gut bacteria. And the great thing is there's only 140 calories here. Tastes great, less filling, not bad for you, full of polyphenols, feeds your gut bugs. There are options available. I think you're going to love this one. Fun fact, okra absorbs lectins. It blocks lectins from getting into you. So the more okra that I can get into you, the better.