Although it makes food and beverages taste sweet, sugar has become one of the most maligned substances in food because of its links to healthy maladies such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Knowing what sugar does and how much you should consume on a daily basis will help you live a healthier life.
Function
Sugar is a crystal-like simple carbohydrate that naturally occurs in foods such as fruit and honey or in plants such as sugar cane or sugar beets. Fruits and honey contain fructose, whereas milk and cheese contain lactose, another natural sugar. Desserts such as ice cream, cookies and candy bars and most fruit juices and condiments, including ketchup, contain artificial sweeteners such as sucrose, or table sugar, to make those foods sweeter or palatable.
Nutrition Facts
Sugar has little nutritional value as it does not contain any fat or protein, just simple carbohydrates. One gram of sugar equates to 4 calories so a can of soda that has 20 grams of sugar has 80 calories, according to the health website Medical News Today.
Types of Sugars
The three types of sugars are organized by saccharides. Sugars can be classified as monosaccharides, disaccharides and polysaccharides. A saccharide is a type of carbohydrate or starch and the more saccharides in a sugar ("di" meaning two, "poly" more than two), the more complex and parts make up the sugar. For example, a monosaccharide sugar is sucrose, the common table sugar added to food.
Daily Allowance
The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 100 calories (about 25 g) of sugar a day for women and no more than 150 calories (about 37.5 g) for men. This equates to about 6 and 9 tsp. of sugar for women and men, respectively. A study conducted by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reported that the average American consumes 355 calories or about 22.2 tsp. of added sugar a day. With artificial sweeteners in many food condiments such as ketchup, you can easily surpass the daily recommended allowance of sugar in a single day.
Considerations
Aside from tooth decay, the American Heart Association links added sugars in food and soft drinks to obesity and other health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. According to Rachel K. Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., sugar provides no nutritional value other than calories, so limiting the amount of additive sugar you consume a day can pay dividends toward your health.
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