Sugar in Food Checker
Look up the sugar in 130 everyday foods — per serving, per 100 g, in sugar cubes, and with the UK traffic-light rating. Search or browse by category, free.
Showing 18 surprising offenders — foods people don't expect to be sugary.
| Food | Serving | Sugar / serving | ≈ Cubes | Per 100 g |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Blueberry muffin, coffee-shop Biscuits & cakes | 110 g muffin | 33 g | 8.3 | 30 g |
Lemon sorbet Ice cream & desserts | 100 g (2 scoops) | 24 g | 6 | 24 g |
Dried cranberries, sweetened Snacks & bars | 30 g handful | 22 g | 5.5 | 72 g |
Banana bread slice Biscuits & cakes | 80 g slice | 21 g | 5.3 | 26 g |
Sweet & sour stir-fry sauce Canned & jarred | 120 g (½ jar) | 19 g | 4.8 | 16 g |
Chicken teriyaki rice bowl Fast food | 350 g bowl | 18 g | 4.5 | 5.1 g |
Frozen yogurt, strawberry Ice cream & desserts | 100 g (2 scoops) | 18 g | 4.5 | 18 g |
Low-fat strawberry yogurt Yogurts & dairy | 175 g pot | 17 g | 4.3 | 9.7 g |
Agave nectar Breads & spreads | 21 g (1 tbsp) | 16 g | 4 | 76 g |
Sweet chilli sauce Sauces & condiments | 30 g (2 tbsp) | 15 g | 3.8 | 50 g |
BBQ sauce Sauces & condiments | 30 g (2 tbsp) | 11 g | 2.8 | 37 g |
Granola with honey Breakfast cereals | 45 g bowl | 10 g | 2.5 | 22 g |
Baked beans in tomato sauce Canned & jarred | 210 g (½ can) | 10 g | 2.5 | 4.8 g |
Cream of tomato soup Canned & jarred | 200 g (½ can) | 9.8 g | 2.5 | 4.9 g |
Chocolate chip cereal bar Snacks & bars | 25 g bar | 7.5 g | 1.9 | 30 g |
Tomato & basil pasta sauce Sauces & condiments | 125 g (½ jar) | 7 g | 1.8 | 5.6 g |
Brioche roll Breads & spreads | 50 g roll | 6 g | 1.5 | 12 g |
Tomato ketchup Sauces & condiments | 15 ml (1 tbsp) | 4 g | 1 | 23 g |
Total sugars, typical label values — brands vary, so check your product's label. UK traffic-light thresholds for food. 1 sugar cube ≈ 4 g. Log what you actually ate →
How to read the sugar numbers
Every food in the table shows two numbers, and they answer different questions. Per 100 g tells you how sugary a food is — it's the fair way to compare products, and it's what the UK traffic-light thresholds use: green at 5 g or less, amber up to 22.5 g, red above 22.5 g per 100 g. Per serving tells you how much sugar you actually eat — and it's where the surprises live. Ketchup is a red food at roughly 23 g per 100 g, but a tablespoon only delivers 4 g. A cream of tomato soup is green per 100 g at 4.9 g, yet half a can is a 200 g serving — nearly 10 g of sugar, more than two cubes, from something that doesn't taste sweet at all.
Why the default list is "surprising offenders"
Nobody needs a table to know chocolate is sugary. The foods that quietly break sugar budgets are the ones marketed as everyday or healthy: granola (about 10 g per 45 g bowl), low-fat fruit yogurt (up to 17 g in a large pot — low-fat recipes often add sugar to compensate), baked beans (10 g in half a can), a chicken teriyaki rice bowl (about 18 g), and lemon sorbet, which at roughly 24 g per 100 g out-sugars vanilla ice cream. The average US adult eats about 17 teaspoons (~70 g) of added sugar a day, and foods like these — not desserts — are where much of it hides. If a product's label confuses you, paste its ingredient list into the Hidden Sugar Finder to see which of the 70+ sugar aliases it contains.
Total sugars vs. your daily limit
The table reports total sugars, because that's what nutrition labels declare. Health limits, though, target free sugars — added sugar plus the sugars in honey, syrups, and juice. On a 2,000-kcal diet the WHO ceiling is 50 g a day, with an ideal target of 25 g (about 6 teaspoons); the NHS advises adults to stay under 30 g. In practice: the 6 g in a pot of plain yogurt is lactose and doesn't count, while the 22 g in a handful of sweetened dried cranberries mostly does. For packaged foods you're checking yourself, the Food Label Sugar Decoder turns any label's per-100 g figure into a rating and honest per-serving math.
All values here are typical label figures — brands vary, so treat them as estimates, not verdicts on any one product. The fastest way to find out what these numbers mean for your day is to log them: the Sugar Intake Tracker app adds up your servings against your personal limit in about thirty seconds a day.
Frequently asked questions
Which everyday foods are highest in sugar?+
Per 100 g, sweets and spreads top the table: mints and boiled sweets run 65–99 g per 100 g, honey about 82 g, dried cranberries about 72 g, and milk chocolate about 53 g. Per serving, bakery items often win — a coffee-shop blueberry muffin or a slice of carrot cake can carry about 33 g of sugar, more than a 330 ml can of cola (roughly 35 g).
What do the traffic-light colours mean?+
They follow the UK front-of-pack system for food, based on total sugars per 100 g: green is low (5 g or less), amber is medium (over 5 g up to 22.5 g), and red is high (over 22.5 g). It's a per-100 g comparison, so a red food eaten in a tiny serving — like a teaspoon of ketchup — can still add less sugar than an amber food eaten in a big one.
How accurate are these sugar values?+
They are typical supermarket label values, so treat them as guideline-based estimates rather than exact figures for any specific brand — the same product can vary by several grams per 100 g between manufacturers. For the food in your hand, the 'of which sugars' line on the label is always the definitive number.
Is 10 grams of sugar per serving a lot?+
It's 2.5 sugar cubes and about 40% of the WHO's ideal daily target of 25 g for a 2,000-kcal diet, or a fifth of the 50 g ceiling. Two or three 10 g servings — a flavoured yogurt, a bowl of granola, a splash of sauce — can quietly use up an entire day's ideal allowance without a single dessert.
Does the sugar in fruit and milk count the same as added sugar?+
Not quite. The table shows total sugars, which is what labels report, but WHO and NHS limits apply to free sugars — those added to food plus sugars in honey, syrups, and juice. Sugar naturally held in whole fruit and plain milk (like the ~5 g of lactose per 100 g in plain yogurt) doesn't count toward your limit, while the sugar in raisins, dried cranberries, and smoothies largely does.
Can I use this tool to manage a health condition?+
No — it's an educational reference built on population guidelines, not medical advice. If you have diabetes, prediabetes, or any condition affected by sugar intake, follow the individual targets set by your clinician or dietitian rather than general figures from a lookup table.
Now track it daily
Knowing the number is step one — seeing it every day is what changes it. Sugar Intake Tracker, our iOS app in development, logs added sugar from a photo of your food: snap it, confirm the AI estimate, done.
Meet the appAI estimate · You confirm · Your log stays on your device