Being a minor pedant - the sugar in Smoked Salmon isn't really 'the food producers putting sugar everywhere', it's part of how the Salmon is cured before it's smoked. Rubs and cures are fairly typically a mix of salt and sugar along with herbs and spices - the sugar is a pretty integral part of the process rather than being an additional ingredient.
Not to mention its a very small amount of sugar. I noticed in the study they replaced added sugars with simple carbs (bagels/chips). Makes me wonder if the best strategy is just reducing all sugar/simple carbs across the board and replacing with low GI or high fat foods.
This works for me, I lost 65 lbs over a year. Now that I hit my goals I eat very low carb (< 20 net grams) for breakfast/lunch and low/moderate carb for supper (30-60 net grams).
It's more about the quantity of sugar than the fact the salmon has sugar. When people say cut added sugar out of your diet, they're talking about removing a single food item that might have 20-45 grams of sugar.
I smoke my own salmon. After cutting the salmon, you let it sit in a mixture of salt and sugar overnight. From my understanding, the salt pulls moisture out of the fish - it's impressive how much moisture is pulled out. The fish starts out sitting in a bowl of salt and sugar, and in the morning the bowl is filled with liquid. You rinse all the salt and sugar off, dry the fish on racks, and then put it in a smoker.
I've been told the sugar is used to keep the fish from becoming overly salty, but I imagine it serves other purposes as well. I'd love to know what that is. We've started experimenting with using less sugar, but it seems the fish would get really salty if you cut too much sugar out.
Sugar is a preservative; it directly combats spoilage through osmotic effects, and does it indirectly in a couple different ways.
More importantly, since it was historically used to cure meats, it's become an important part of the flavor profile of those products. It's the same with nitrates and ham and bacon; without them, it just doesn't taste like bacon, which is why "uncured bacon" is usually a pretty deceptive product.
> Sugar is added to cured salmon because it helps prevent the growth of microorganisms. When this process was originally developed, food spoilage was a huge problem (it meant the difference between survival and death) while metabolic disorders were rare.
