An item has 1g of sugar and 6g of sugar alcohol - do you add the two together or not?

No. First of all, we always recommend keep your food as healthy and natural as possible. If God made it eat it. Meat,vegetables, produce, and all of the things that God made eat as these are easily digestible, and your cells love natural, healthy things. Sugar, alcohol is a lab created product where one carbon of the 6 carbon sugar has been removed. Sugar alcohol is simply sugar. with one carbon removed, and the body does not recognize it. As your body is an expert at recognizing what is real and what is not real. So because the body does not recognize a 5 carbon sugar, which is what sugar alcohol is. The theory behind it is that it will bypass the body altogether. Thereby giving you the sweet taste of sugar without the calorie of sugar.