Do these Date Almond Granola Bars have added sugars?

[Ironman8]

I bought these bars in the soy section of the supermarket and wondering if they have any added sugars (I want natural sugars). Here are the ingrediants.

Brown rice flour, organic oats, pear-pineapple juice, dates, apple juice, barley malt, cane juice, rice bran, papaya, pineapple, raisins, natural flavors (almond[contains peanut], vanilla) grape jucie

The label says it has 14g of sugar, but I don't know if it's added or natural. Any help would be fine. Thanks in advance.

[bradley]

Most of the sugar comes from all the fruit/fruit juice that is in the bars. It is added sugar but from natural sources, if that makes sense.

[Ironman8]

Awesome, thanks. BTW, does that mean it won't spike my insulin levels?

[bradley]

Originally posted by Ironman8
Awesome, thanks. BTW, does that mean it won't spike my insulin levels?

I wouldn't think so.

[aka23]

Listed in order of highest content, the sugars are:

1. pear-pineapple juice
2. dates
3. apple juice
4. barley malt
5. cane juice
6. papaya
7. pineapple
8. raisins
9. grape juice

The ones which I think are particulary 'bad' are barley malt and cane juice.

The ones which I think are not particularly good sources are the other jucies: pear-pineapple juice, apple juice, and grape juice. Nurtients such as fiber are often lost when fruits are made into juices, but I think juices are better than typical sweeteners like table sugar.

I do not think you should be concerned with the fruits that are not juices; which includes dates, papaya, pineapple, and raisins.

It has hard to say what portion of the sugars come from these sources. I would expect that the sugar is predominately composed of the first three sources -- pear-pineapple juice, dates, and apple juice.

does that mean it won't spike my insulin levels?

A granola bar typically has a GI of about 60-70 on a scale of glucose=100. This is on par with most whole grains, but higher than most fruits or legumes. I would expect your bar to be on the lower end of this range because its sugars are not the type that are assoicated with insulin spikes.

[Ironman8]

aka23 and Bradley, you guys never fail to help me . Thanks.

[bradley]

This was posted by Lyle McDonald

There was a study just recently (someone posted it but I don't have it handy) that looked at fructose intake following exercise and it's effect on fat burning.

On hypocalories (dieting), fructose had zero effect, you got the same fat burning compared to other sugars. This is logical, on below maintenance calories, you do'nt refill liver glycogen effectively under most conditions so the fructsoe will rapidly convert to glucose and get dumped into teh bloodstream. So now slowing of fat utilization for energy.

But at maintenance calories, fructose post workout inhibited fat
burning. For exactly that reason: fructose refilled liver glycogen and slowed fat burning. This is also eminently logical.

Basically, on a diet, it doesn't seem to matter. On hypercalories, it
does, but you're going to gain fat pretty much no matter what you do.

And I forget who it was (Whit) but somene on mfw lost a ton of fat eating all of their carbs from fruit last year. So any effect had to be minimal/nonexistent.

Here is the complete thread if anyone is interested.
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...f31ce2d&rnum=1