A 12-ounce can of Coke has nearly 10 teaspoons of sugar in it. I got curious about this because I looked at the back of a 12-ounce Coke can ad noticed it had 39 grams of sugar in it. I have no idea what a gram of sugar looks like, but I do know what a teaspoon looks like.
A single teaspoon of sugar is equal to 4 grams of sugar. To be precise, 4.2 grams of sugar equals a teaspoon, but the nutrition labels round this number to 4 grams. To put it another way, if you eat a snack that has 16 grams of sugar listed on its label, you are consuming 4 teaspoons of sugar. If you divide 39 (grams of sugar in a can of Coke) by 4 (teaspoons) you get 9.75. So, a 12-ounce can of Coke has nearly 10 teaspoons, or 3.33 tablespoons, of sugar in it. That is amazing. I thought it might be 1 or 2 teaspoons.
This is the amount of sugar in a 12-ounce can of Coke.
A 20-ounce bottle of Coke has about 65 grams, or just over 16 teaspoons, of sugar in it. A 2-liter bottle of coke has about 216 grams, or 54 teaspoons, of sugar in it.
When reading food and drink nutrition information labels, keep in mind that the grams of sugar listed include the natural sugars from fruit (fructose) and milk (lactose) in addition to any granulated sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc. added to the product.
This is why labels on milk and fruit snacks have more sugar listed on them then you might think. When I say fruit snacks, I mean real fruit snacks like dehydrated fruit, not artificial sugary fruit snacks.
INTERESTING FACTS
- The average American eats around 70 pounds of refined sugar each year.
- “Diet” soda might still actually make you fat.
- Glycolaldehyde is an eight-atom sugar that has been found in a gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way.
INTERESTING VIDEO
INTERESTING REFERENCES
- WashingtonPost.com – How many grams of sugar are in a teaspoon?
- MSU.edu – How to convert grams of sugars into teaspoons
- MentalFloss.com – 15 Sweet Facts About Sugar
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