Watch out for hidden sugar!

And while there’s obviously sugar in biscuits and buns, there’s also lots of sneaky sugar packed into places where you don’t expect it. Here are a list of high sugar foods that may surprise you!

• Fat free doesn’t mean sugar free, especially when it comes to yoghurt. It’s often laden with sugar to keep flavour and texture when fat is removed. A 150g serving of some 0% fat yogurts can contain as much as 20g of sugar – the equivalent of five teaspoons.

• Shop-bought tomato pasta sauces are often packed with sugar. It’s usually added to make the sauce taste less acidic. A third of an average-sized jar, roughly 150g, can contain over 13g of sugar. That’s roughly three teaspoons of sugar.

• And while coleslaw is mostly shredded vegetables, it also comes with an added serving of sugar. The mayonnaise is largely to blame. One tablespoon of a shop-bought coleslaw, roughly 50g, can contain up to 4g of sugar. A couple of spoonful’s on your plate is equivalent to 2 of teaspoons of sugar.

• Cereal – a Which? Survey of 50 top selling cereals found that 32 of them had a very high sugar content. The worst culprits were cereals that are marketed to children. Only two out of the 14 children’s cereals looked at, Weetabix and Rice Krispies, were not high in sugar. Kellogg’s Frosties topped the tables with 37% of the product weight being sugar. The same goes for cereal bars – do not be fooled by healthy marketing campaigns – always read the label!

• Finally – bread – for most children, bread is central to their diet. The sugar content in the average slice of processed bread varies but can be as high 3g. Some sugar is formed naturally in the baking process but it is often added too.

A good rule of thumb is to go for foods that are less processed.