Mmmm. What’s your favorite go-to sweet? Maybe it’s M&Ms, a spoonful of ice cream, or a can of soda. As a teenager, it’s difficult to avoid sugar as a snack, whether it’s sweet breakfast cereal or fruit juice. Much of the food we eat is full of “hidden” sugars, since manufacturers add sugars to foods such as bread, spaghetti sauce, fruit-flavored yogurt, and salad dressing. Even ketchup includes sugar. In fact, nutritionists say that high fructose corn syrup – a form of sugar – is a major culprit in the country’s obesity crisis. (Take the Snack Attack quiz to get some personalized feedback.)

You might hear people say that if you eat too many sweets at once, you’ll get a “sugar rush.” Maybe — but scientists haven’t proven it. But too much sugar is added empty calories, not to speak of sugar possibly causing tooth decay.

Consider this: a can of soda contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Guess what the experts recommend for total consumption of “added sugar” (sugar not found naturally in food) in one day? You guessed it: 10 teaspoons. Some chocolate bars have more than 7 ½ teaspoons of sugar. A serving of some sweet cereals contains more than 3 ½ teaspoons. One national survey showed that teenagers ages 14 to 18 consume a whopping 34 teaspoons of added sugar a day.

Our bodies do need sugar — just not the kind that you’ll find in candy bars, soda, sweet cereals, and lots of other processed foods.

The kind of sugar our bodies actually need is called glucose. Our bodies create glucose from the healthy food we eat, such as fruits and vegetables, grain products, and dairy products. Our bodies process the various forms of refined sugars found in foods — with names like high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, and corn sweetener — differently than they do the sugars found in fruit, vegetables, grains, and dairy products. And those differences actually make us store more fat and want to eat more.

What to do? It’s simple: check food labels. Try to stay away from foods that list sugars as one of the first four or five ingredients. (Since ingredients are listed by weight, sugar near the beginning of the list means there’s a lot of it in the product.) Check how many grams of sugar are in one serving.

How much is too much?

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the list below shows how much sugar, mostly in the form of high fructose corn syrup, is in each of these single servings.

Sweet Somethings

Too much sugar cannot cause diabetes but being overweight is a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.

• Sunkist soda: 10 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
• Berkeley Farms low-fat yogurt with fruit: 10 teaspoons of sugar
• Mott's applesauce: 5 teaspoons of sugar
• Slim-Fast chocolate cookie dough meal bar: 5 teaspoons of sugar
• 1 tablespoon ketchup: 1 teaspoon of sugar

Check out Fast Food City interactive tool.

This article was reviewed by Tara Cousineau, Ph.D.