logoalt Hacker News

autoexec • yesterday at 6:19 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

> Jelly inherently, as a direct consequence of its very reason for existing, contains a lot of sugar, duh.

If a typical jelly recipe calls for pounds of fruit and a few cups of sugar wouldn't be normal to expect fruit to be the first ingredient? If a company is using more added sugars than fruit that should be obvious without having to look at the nutrition facts


Replies

SAI_Peregrinus • yesterday at 7:25 PM

Typical jelly & jamrecipes call for close to 1:1 fruit to sugar. E.g. ¹Ball mason jars strawberry jam recipe calls for 7 cups sugar to 5 cups strawberries. Martha Stewart calls for 3/4 cup sugar for every cup of juice² in making jelly. The Joy of Cooking (44th printing 1988)notes that "Store-bought jellies, according to law, must have at least 45% fruit and 55% sugar". Etc.

¹https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=classic-strawberry-ja...

²https://www.marthastewart.com/1127955/basic-jelly-recipe

³ ISBN 0-02-604570-2, Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer & Becker, page 832

➕ show 1 reply
thaumasiotes • yesterday at 6:29 PM

For the product in question, they aren't using more added sugars than fruit.

As you can read on the label:

    Ingredients: Strawberries, High Fructose Corn syrup, Corn syrup, Sugar, Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid.

    Serving Size              20g

    Total Sugars              12g
       Total Added Sugars      9g
Each tablespoon of jam contains 10-11 grams of fruit and 9-10 grams of added sugar. The jam is 60% sugar overall because there is sugar in the fruit too.

And that's weighted by share of the output. If you're measuring the input, this recipe is going to take a lot more "fruit" than "sugar", because part of making jam is boiling away a bunch of the water that occurs in fruit, whereas all of the added sugar is retained. (Corn syrup, however, seems to be about 2/3 water, which will make that comparison look worse.)

➕ show 3 replies