Don't be fooled, artificial sweeteners are also found in food products labeled as 'lite' and 'diet'.
Eating Well comes up with a list of the 10 foods that surprisingly still has artificial sweeteners in their ingredient:
1. Granola (monk fruit extract): Lower-sugar versions of a product usually means it has hidden sweeteners, like in some granolas.
2. English muffins (sucralose): Some English muffins-even the whole-wheat ones-contain sucralose.
3. High-fiber breakfast cereal (sucralose & acesulfame K): Ironically, even within the same brand you'll find some cereals that contain sugar substitutes like these and some that don't.
4. Regular bottled iced tea (acesulfame K & sucralose): Non-diet iced tea, the fruit-flavored ones contains more of the fake sugars. Choose the plain, unsweetened type and eat with real fruits instead.
5. Non-diet ginger ale (sucralose): One brand we encountered contained both high-fructose corn syrup and sucralose. A 12-oz. would mean artificial sweeteners plus 4½ teaspoons of actual sugar.
6. Microwave kettle corn (sucralose): It's low-fat and contains zero sugars-but keep looking if you want zero sucralose, too.
7. Light and fat-free Italian dressings (stevia): Regular dressings tend to use fewer sweeteners of any kind than light or lower-fat types.
8. Frozen honey BBQ chicken breast pieces (sucralose): The honey is nothing but a lie, it contains more sugars than you expected!
9. Toasted coconut almonds (rebiana): The brand we spied contained sugar, brown sugar and stevia. We're all for almonds, but this is sweetness overkill.
10. Fizzy vitamin drink mix packets (stevia leaf extract): Along with a boatload of vitamins, you're also getting this plant-based sugar substitute in many of the flavors of one popular manufacturer's fizzy packets. It's just more proof that you have to read those labels-even on "good-for-you" items!
