WASHINGTON — All that candy your kids brought home from trick-or-treating sure is tempting.
And that chocolate bar you swiped from their candy bags? Of course it contains lots of sugar. A Hershey’s bar, for instance, contains 24 grams of the sweet stuff.
But it’s that can of soup in your cupboard that you have to worry about.
“A can of national brand tomato soup also has 24 grams of sugar in it,” says local food lawyer Mary Beth Albright.
To put that in context: There are four grams of sugar in a teaspoon.
“My problem is not with eating the Hershey bar,” Albright says. “My problem is with eating a can of soup and feeling like you haven’t had dessert when you really have.”
Be careful with salad dressing, too: “There are more than 10 grams of sugar in two tablespoons of salad dressing,” Albright says.
And ketchup? “When people are like, ‘my kid loves ketchup,’ it’s like, ‘yeah, my kid loves mainlining sugar.'”
Yet for those looking to maintain their weight, 1,800 calories is the same everywhere.
“It really matters where you get those 1,800 calories from,” Albright says. “If you eat 1,800 calories of whole grains, that will make you feel a whole lot different than eating 1800 calories worth of sugar.”
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