Sugar Surprise: How Much Sugar Are You Eating?

Health professionals around the nation are urging people to
decrease their intake of refined sugars to help combat rising
health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular
diseases, and certain cancers. The USDA recommends for people to
consume less than 10 percent of their calories from sugar. For
someone eating a 2000 calorie diet this would equate to about 12
teaspoons of sugar a day. Seems simple doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, it’s a little trickier than you might think. The
harsh reality is that on average, Americans consume around 20
teaspoons a day.

It can be quite confusing to figure out how much sugar you are
consuming especially when some of it comes in natural forms such
as fruit, and fruit juices. The easiest way to eliminate this
problem is to back off the juice and don’t worry too much about
the sugar you take in from whole fruit (unless you have diabetes
or hypoglycemia). Juices are pretty much pure sugar yet they are
better for you than soda because along with the sugar comes
loads of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. However, this
sugar will still lead you to gain weight so it is best to limit
juice to a couple times a week and drink only a 6 ounce serving
size. As far as the whole fruit goes, if we were only getting
our sugars from eating just fruits an vegetables we’d be better
off and would have a lower risk of chronic diseases.

So how can you tell how much sugar is in your foods? Read the
labels! The first place to look is the sugar section on your
food label which is located under Total Carbohydrate. A quick
way to convert the sugar grams to teaspoons is to divide the
number of grams by four. For example, if your food label shows
16 grams of sugar, divide that by four and you will get four
teaspoons of sugar per serving. Now that you know this little
trick you will be amazed how quickly that sugar adds up.
Remember…your goal is around 12 teaspoons per day or less.

The next thing to be aware of is hidden sugars on the ingredient
list. Here are some disguises of sugar:

* Sucrose * Fructose * Maple Syrup * Molasses * Dextrose *
Turbinado * Amazake * Sorbitol * Carob powder * High fructose
corn syrup

Keep your eye out for these names on the ingredient list of your
food packages. You will be surprised, just picking up a can of
baked beans shows molasses, sugar, and fructose which are all
driving the sugar content up.

Keeping sugar to less than 10% of your calories will go a long
way towards managing your weight and health. Limit the obvious
sugars such as sweets and sodas but also look into some of the
common foods you buy and see if there are any sugar surprises
that you have found.

©, 2005 Meri Raffetto

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