I eat muesli for breakfast pretty much every day - partly because I like it but also because of my perception that its good for me. However, it occurred to me recently that your standard commercially-made muesli might have too much sugar to be worth eating from a health point of view. I’m certainly aware that most other breakfast cereals are chock full of sugar. I’m eating a type of muesli that has dried fruit in it. It just tastes so good that I can’t help but be suspicious that its got loads of sugar in it… hence the question. I don’t know if y’all have any wisdom to impart beyond “read the writing on the packet” which no doubt says that one of the ingredients is sugar. My question is how much.
In this country all packaged food has to say how much sugar, fat, etc there is in it right on the packet. As we don’t know where you are we can’t say what you should be seeing.
But yes, if it has lots of dried fruit then it has lots of fructose which is a form of sugar. The fruit and grains also have slow burn carbs in them which is good for you, as is the fibre you’re getting. So overall it’s a better breakfast cereal that almost any other (I’m assuming you’re putting milk on it, not fruit juice and especially not more sugar!). As long as you’re not taking in lots of sugar during the rest of the day - soft drinks and snacks especially - then you’re probably OK and not having too much sugar overall.
Without knowng the specific brand of ceraeal you’re eating, or even which country on earth you’re from, we can’t offer anything but generalities.
In the US, it’s a good bet that sugar is an ingredient. The label is required to list the ingrediaents from most to least by weight. The trick is that they can add 4 kinds of sugar, list them as ingredient numbers 3, 5, 7, and 9, and still have sugar be the #1 ingredient in a true accounting. As a rule of thumb, any word in the ingredient list ending in “ose” is sugar, as is any ingredient with “sugar” in it.
So a (hypothetical) ingredient list might be “wheat, oats, high fructose corn syrup, corn, corn syrup, sugar, almonds, maltose, dextrose, walnuts, honey, … bunch of vitiamins, … bunch of preservatives.”
That translates to “wheat, oats, SUGAR, corn, SUGAR, SUGAR, almonds, SUGAR, SUGAR, walnuts, SUGAR, … bunch of vitiamins, … bunch of preservatives.”
Guess what? Sugar is really the #1 ingredient, the rest of the stuff is just there to hold your sugar lumps together.
It is also likely to be high in fat, if it is a toasted muesli - oil is added before baking to make it crunchy. But you can get no oil added versions, as suggested check the nutritional information to find a healthy version.
Could have a boat load of sugar in it. Try some low sugar muesli for yourself and you’ll probably taste the difference. There is a popular muesli in the UK called alpen, don’t know if you have ever tried it, but it tastes sickly sweet (to me). They also do low sugar alpen, which is quite tasty.