There are 152 ways to say “sugar” on a food label. It can be called isomaltulose, agave, barley malt, sorghum or brown rice syrup, even potato syrup solids.
All of those obscure synonyms will be listed in one convenient place on the food label, behind the word “sugar,” as Health Minister Jane Philpott announced Wednesday.
But you will still never know how much of that sugar was deliberately added by the food processing industry and how much is just there naturally.
And in the first round of the great Canadian food label fight, that is a victory for the food industry.
Consumers, health professionals, even the provincial and territorial governments, had wanted labelling of added sugars.
It’s all there in the document Regulations Amending the Food and Drug Regulations published in the Canada Gazette on Wednesday.
“The proposal to declare the amount of added sugars in the Nutrition Facts table was …