These Everyday Foods Contain Way More Sugar Than You Thought

Here's a riddle for you: What's high in sugar but doesn't taste that sweet? If your answer is "a whole lot of foods," you hit the nail on the head, because there are a ton of foods that are absolutely loaded with a lot more sugar than you realize. 

When you eat a grape, you most likely notice how sweet it is. Now imagine condensing all of that sugar into a bite much smaller than a grape, and you'll realize that raisins are in fact very sugary; ¼ cup of them contains 29 grams of sugar!

All flavored yogurts (unless they're sugar-free) are higher in sugar than plain ones, but the amount of sugar in them may surprise you. Chobani is super-popular as a healthy choice for snacking or dessert, but a 5.3-ounce container of their black cherry yogurt contains a whopping 17 grams of sugar.  And one six-ounce container of Yoplait's blackberry yogurt contains 26 grams of sugar, or about six and a half teaspoons.

All flavored yogurts (unless they're sugar-free) are higher in sugar than plain ones, but the amount of sugar in them may surprise you. Chobani is super-popular as a healthy choice for snacking or dessert, but a 5.3-ounce container of their black cherry yogurt contains a whopping 17 grams of sugar.  And one six-ounce container of Yoplait's blackberry yogurt contains 26 grams of sugar, or about six and a half teaspoons.

We most likely think of ketchup as being more tangy than anything else, but that savory condiment is in fact full of sugar. One tablespoon of ketchup contains four grams of sugar, about a teaspoon, and most people don't stop at one serving.

The word parfait usually connotes dessert, but in recent years parfaits have also come to be seen as breakfast, found at the likes of Starbucks and McDonald's. Next time you reach for that healthy-sounding yogurt and granola cup, don't forget that these things are full of sugar. The one sold by Starbucks, which contains nonfat yogurt, honey, granola, pumpkin seeds, and dried cranberries, contains 30 grams of sugar.

Pricey bottled smoothies were all the rage until consumers started looking at the nutrition labels and seeing just how much sugar they were consuming. Yes, it's fruit sugar, but 47 grams of sugar (the amount in a bottle of Odwalla's Original Superfood) is still way too much to consume in one sitting. 

Like ketchup, tomato soup needs to have a lot of sugar added to round out the acidity. One can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup, for example, contains about 30 grams of sugar!

Granola bars, while they enjoy a reputation for being healthy, are often much sweeter than they need to be. Those Nature Valley Trail Mix Fruit & Nut bars, for example, contain 13 grams of sugar, and the popular Oats 'n Honey bars contain 12 grams of sugar per pack. And even though Quaker Chewy Chocolate Chip Granola Bars are pretty small, those still contain 7 grams of sugar each. 

As mentioned earlier, salad dressings (especially fat-free ones) are full of sugar. For example, Kraft's French Style Fat-Free Dressing contains five grams per two tablespoons. Most people put a whole lot more than two tablespoons of dressing on their salad, so if you think you're being healthy by eating a salad, make sure you don't forget about the dressing!

Ah, the dreaded tomato appears once again, this time in the form of marinara sauce. Chefs know to add a little sugar to their tomato sauce to bring out the tomatoes' sweetness, but some companies add a lot more than others. Prego's Traditional marinara sauce, for example, contains 10 grams of sugar per half-cup serving.