Savvy Eating/Drinking, 2/11/22: How Much Sugar is in a Glass of Wine?, Moderate Drinking, Low Sugar Chocolate Chips, Diet Coke Addiction, Vegan Fast Food is Unhealthy

How Much Sugar Is in a Glass of Wine? was written by Sophie Egan for TheNewYorkTimes.com, 26 May 2017 … still valid today, 4 years later.

To find out how much sugar might have been added to a given wine, your best bet may be to contact the producer directly. According to Tom Hogue, a spokesman for the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, wine producers may provide nutritional details about their products on a voluntary basis, so long as they adhere to regulations from the bureau.

Winemakers employ a range of techniques to achieve desired properties and flavor profiles. The addition of sulfites, used as a preservative, must be listed on the label in order to notify individuals who might be allergic, yet more than 60 different additives can legally be used without being disclosed. With regard to sugar, regulations vary by state. In California, for instance, added sugar is not allowed at any point in the winemaking process. There, winemakers may rely on unfermented grape juice to tweak the sweetness.

“Wine is by nature somewhat acidic, and adjustments can help to balance the elements of sweet and sour,” Nancy Light, vice president of communications for Wine Institute, the main advocacy association for the California wine industry, said in an email. “Winemakers are permitted by government regulations to make sweetness adjustments after fermentation to achieve desired wine styles.”

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, a five-ounce glass of red table wine typically contains about 0.9 grams of total sugar, while a glass of chardonnay contains about 1.4 grams. A sweet dessert wine, typically served in a smaller two- to three-ounce glass, contains as much as 7 grams of sugar. Depending on where the wine was made, the total may include added sugar or sugar from unfermented grape juice, along with the sugar that occurs naturally in the grapes.

Along with adding sugar for the purpose of sweetening wine, some producers add sugar before or during fermentation in order to achieve a certain alcohol level. This process is called chaptalization, and it is more common in cooler wine regions such as Oregon, where grapes ripen more slowly. Alcoholic fermentation occurs when yeast metabolizes a source of sugar (glucose, sucrose, or fructose), turning it into ethanol (alcohol) and carbon dioxide. In beer, the sugar comes from the starch in malted cereal grain, typically barley. In wine, it comes from grape juice. Grapes that are riper have higher sugar levels, but if available grapes are not as ripe, a winemaker may add sugar to aid in fermentation and achieve the desired amount of alcohol.

Data From Over 350,000 People Have Really Bad News About ‘Moderate’ Drinking was reported by Jacinta Bowler for ScienceAlert.com, 31 January 2022.

We all know that drinking too much is bad for us. But what about just a few glasses a week? Red wine has antioxidants, we’ve been told, so a few glasses are apparently ‘good for you’. Other studies have suggested that low-to-moderate drinkers are less likely to have a heart attack than those who avoid drinking altogether. Wine is even included (in moderation) in the Mediterranean diet, one of the healthiest food plans on the planet!

But a new study, published in the paper Clinical Nutrition, based on a huge data set from the United Kingdom now suggests that the J- or U- shaped curve of drinking is based on bad science; even having less than the currently recommended number of drinks per week in the UK is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular issues. “The so-called J-shaped curve of the cardiovascular disease-alcohol consumption relationship suggesting health benefits from low to moderate alcohol consumption is the biggest myth since we were told smoking was good for us,” says cardiovascular physiologist Rudolph Schutte from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).

“While we hear much about wine drinkers having lower risk of coronary artery disease, our data shows their risk of other cardiovascular events is not reduced.”

Chocolate chips sweetened with half the sugar was reported by Abilgail Klein Leichman for Israel21c.org, 8 February 2022. DouxMatok and Blommer Chocolate introduce a sugar-reduced chip to the North American market.

Incredo Sugar from Israeli food-tech company DouxMatok is the key ingredient in Blommer Chocolate Company’s reduced-sugar chocolate-flavored chips coming to consumer packaged goods in North America. Incredo Sugar is made of real cane sugar but allows for up to 50 percent sugar reduction through a patented flavor delivery technology that enhances the perception of sweetness on the taste receptors. Blommer is the largest cocoa processor and ingredient chocolate supplier in North America.

“We’ve been working to provide a reduced-sugar chocolate offering for a long time, and when we began working with Incredo Sugar, we knew it would be successful,” said David Meggs, Chief Operating Officer at Blommer Chocolate Company. “Until now, we’ve only been able to offer full sugar or zero sugar products, without a sufficient offering for sugar-reduced chocolate that meets our high taste and sweetness expectations. We’re confident that our collaboration with DouxMatok is going to advance the space and we’re excited to introduce these new offerings to our network of customers.”

The new chocolate-flavored chip in Blommer’s better-for-you Discovery line has 50% less sugar, lower calories and higher fiber compared to traditional full sugar chocolate chips.

Diet Coke Addiction with Type 1 Diabetes: It’s a Thing was written by Makaila Heifner for DiabetesMine.com, 2 February 2022.

While Diet Coke appears to be addicting across the board, people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) are especially susceptible, given that diet soda is the perfect “free food” because it does not affect our glucose levels. It’s almost become a joke in the online diabetes patient community that Diet Coke is our go-to treat of choice. Only a fraction of those who replied to our query about Diet Coke addiction said that they were able to quit it.

Why:

- That’s probably because Diet Coke constitutes “the ultimate comfort food” for people with T1D, explains Gary Scheiner, Certified Diabetes Care and Education Specialist, owner of the practice Integrated Diabetes Services in Pennsylvania, and author of six books, including “Think Like a Pancreas.”
- In terms of what makes diet soda so addictive, the coaches at Diabetic Muscle and Fitness post that “the secret combination of spices and the intense sweet taste of the artificial sweeteners served in a perfectly cooled carbonated can in the perfect quantity makes you feel intensely happy.”
- And then the caffeine kicks in. They also talk about the “high” people get, knowing that they skipped calorie-rich snacks in favor of this “free” drink.

Health Risks?

- One 2015 study suggested that diet soda increases the risk of obesity across the board — not just for people with diabetes.
- A review published in 2019 concluded that those who drank more than 7 glasses of diet soda a week were nearly twice as likely to develop kidney disease as people who drank less than 1 glass.
- More research suggests that individuals can face an increased risk of alteration to their gut microbiome, explaining the gastrointestinal discomfort that some people experience.
- Other research suggests another negative side effect that those who consume a lot of sweet-tasting beverages may experience heightened cravings.

Despite all that, Scheiner says that most healthcare teams aren’t typically worried about T1D patients’ consumption of diet soda. “Addiction to diet soda is so far down on the list when we consider diabetes management because there are so many other things we have to do and worry about.”

Vegan fast-food: why plant-based alternatives are good for the planet but not your health was published by Dr. Stuart Farrimond for ScienceFocus.com, 28 January 2022.

According to a study carried out by the UK Data Service, the number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupled between 2014 and 2019. Similar shifts are afoot across the developed world: Berlin-based vegan supermarket chain Veganz say plant-only eating doubled in continental Europe between 2016 and 2020, and a report compiled by research firm Global Data found that the number of vegans in the US rocketed up by 500 percent over a similar time period.

Enter a new type of foodstuff: vegan fast food. From sausage rolls to chicken nuggets, there are currently a bewildering number of options on supermarket shelves and burger joints for the plant-based junk food lover to fill their faces with. ‘Plant-based’ is currently such a hot term in the food industry – some manufacturers even go so far as to label their cardboard cartons as ‘plant-based’. But how do these new ultra-processed products stack up against old-fashioned meat-based alternatives when it comes to impacts on health and climate?

THE ENVIRONMENT: A study carried out at Trinity College Dublin found that picking the vegan option over beef when ordering a burger could shrink your meal’s cost to the climate and the environment by up to 96 percent.

YOUR HEALTH: Eating less meat really is a good idea. Food writer Michael Pollan famously summed up healthy eating as: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” This truism has been supported with science countless times, with high meat and dairy consumption linked to obesity, bowel cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even dementia.

However, the EAT–Lancet Commission on nutrition has shown that the healthiest diet for us and the planet is largely plant-based but includes small amounts of meat, fish, and dairy. For much of Homo Sapiens’ existence, we have survived on mostly vegetables, leaves, seeds, nuts, insects alongside a little meat and fish. From top to tail, our digestive system and the trillions of microbes that call it home are evolved for processing lots of flora.

Vegan burgers fall well outside this ideal: a congealed disc of refined pea protein, emulsifiers, oils, and lab-made starches, pepped up with sugar, flavorings and a lot of salt is about as close to a vegetable as a space hopper is to a spaceship. Imitation meats are among the most highly processed foods to ever grace our tables, effectively neutralizing many of the health benefits a greenery-filled diet should bring.

Vegan ‘meats’ fall into the newly recognized category of ‘ultra-processed’ food, which has been linked to the very same health perils of eating red meat and fried food. The fibrous skins and the crunchy pith of vegetables that our gut microbes so love is scraped away long before a lump of fake meat plops onto the production line.

If you are thinking of swapping your meat patty for a plant protein alternative, the planet may thank you, but your waistline and arteries might not.