The hidden sugar in 'healthy' snacks — how to read an Indian label
'No added sugar', 'made with real fruit', 'multigrain' — the packet is marketing. Here's the 20-second label check that cuts through it.
Granola, fruit juice, 'digestive' biscuits, flavoured yoghurt, breakfast cereal — a lot of 'healthy' packets carry more sugar than a gulab jamun. The front of the pack is an advertisement. The truth is on the back.
The 20-second label check:
1. Find "Sugars" under carbohydrates. Per 100g, under ~5g is low, over ~15g is high. Now look at the actual serving — packets love a tiny "serving size" to make the number look small.
2. Read the ingredients in order. They're listed by weight. If sugar — or any of its 20 aliases — is in the first three, it's a sugar product. Watch for: glucose syrup, fructose, maltodextrin, invert sugar, fruit juice concentrate, honey, jaggery powder, cane juice.
3. "No added sugar" ≠ low sugar. Fruit-juice or date-based snacks can be sky-high in natural sugars that behave the same way in your blood.
4. "Multigrain" / "made with atta" tells you nothing about sugar or fat. Ignore the buzzword; check the numbers.
The honest swaps: whole fruit over juice; chaas or plain dahi over flavoured yoghurt; roasted chana, makhana, or peanuts over 'baked' namkeen; real meals over 'health' bars.
You don't need to be perfect — you need to not be fooled. Snap a confusing label in The Kitchen and Tula will read it with you.
A read is a start. Tula knows what you've eaten, slept, and felt — and uses that to suggest one small move at a time. Pick where to take this next: