The American Heart Association has released new recommendations for how much sugar you should eat. Sugar should be limited to less than 100 calories for average women and 150 calories for average men. To make this simpler, only 10 percent of your daily calories should come from sugar. This recommendation is for added sugar and sweeteners and not naturally occurring sugars in fruit and milk.
Discretionary Calories
Discretionary calories are calories left over in your diet for fat, alcohol and sugar, according to Rachel Johnson, Ph.D. and colleagues in "Dietary Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association." If a 150-lb. man needs, 2,040 calories to maintain his weight, 10 percent of his calories go toward alcohol, fat, and sugar, which is 204 calories. The 204 calories can be eaten in the form of soft drinks, cake, cookies, pie or candy. One 12-oz can of soda is 140 calories, which leaves him with 64 calories left for discretionary eating. Discretionary calories don't go far in allowing you to eat large amounts of sugar.
Consumption
Consumption of sugar increased gradually in the United States. According to Johnson and colleagues, the American sugar consumption increased 19 percent from 1970 to 2005. Americans average 22.2 teaspoons of added sugar or 355 calories per day. Soft drinks, which include fruit-flavored beverages, carbonated drinks, energy drinks, teas and flavored coffees; along with desserts, candies, jellies and ready-to-eat cereals count for the biggest portion of sugar in the American diet. Sugar also is being added to foods like spaghetti sauce to improve flavoring to cause consumers to choose one brand over the other. This trend in sugar consumption correlates with obesity rates.
Dietary Sugar
Dietary sugar consumption leads to obesity and many other chronic illnesses related to obesity. Sugar sweetened drinks are being consumed more with meals than any other time. This can disguise calorie consumption because most people often don't associate liquid calories with solid food calories. This leads to over consumption of calories, which contributes to weight gain. Excessive calorie consumption above your body's needs contributes to weight gain.
Fructose Sweetener
Fructose was originally marketed as a sweetener for diabetics because of the passive absorption fructose uses and doesn't require insulin for transport and entry into cells. High fructose corn syrup is used primarily by the soft drink industry. According to Johnson, fructose has been implicated in the increase in diabetes and obesity in the United States because of the increased use of it as a sweetener for drinks, medications and other ready-to-eat products. The food industry is fighting evidence mounting against the use of fructose and other sugar sweeteners as being the cause of obesity, citing lack of physical activity as promoting the growing weight of Americans, according to USAToday.com. Regardless of the outcome to the population, decreasing your sugar intake to less than 10 percent of your daily calories leads to a reduction in excess calories from sugar.
Other Sweeteners
Sugar is being added to nutrient-dense foods to improve taste and increase consumption, especially in children and teenagers as stated by Johnson. Other names for sugar include demera, rice syrup, honey, brown sugar, Succinat, turbinado, sugar in the raw, sucrose, maltose, glucose, lactose, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, and fructose. Concentrated fruit juice is also used as a sweetener and you can find it in the ingredients lists of some packaged foods.
References
- "Dietary Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association"; Rachel Johnson, Ph.D. and colleagues; Circulation; 2009
- "Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005"; US Department of Health and Human Services
- Nutrition Connection: Coca-Cola
- World Health Organization: Populations with High Sugar Consumption Are at Increased Risk of Chronic Disease, South African Researchers Report
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