American Heart Association Recommends Reduced Sugar Consumption

Posted By elissa on Aug 29, 2009 | 1 comment

According to the Association’s latest scientific statement:

…most women should consume no more than 100 calories (about 25 grams) of added sugars per day. Most men should consume no more than 150 calories (about 37.5 grams) each day. That’s about six teaspoons of added sugar a day for women and nine for men.

In contrast, the statement cites a report from the 2001–04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that showed the average intake of added sugars for all Americans was 22.2 teaspoons per day (355 calories).

Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the number one source of added sugars in Americans’ diet, according to the statement. “One 12-ounce can of regular soda contains about 130 calories and eight teaspoons of sugar,” Johnson said.

So that works out to about 1 soda/day for men, and about 3/4 of one for women…assuming there’s no added sugar consumed from other sources, such as processed foods.

This goes for “natural” sweeteners like honey, too… as noted in this LA Times article, “Sweet Stuffed“:

Research on sweeteners has a long way to go before nutrition scientists will be able to say for certain whether some are less healthful than others. There’s debate, too, over whether the body is more apt to put on weight when sugars are slurped down in soft drinks than when consumed in solid foods.

For now, there’s agreement on one thing — we’re eating too much sugar, regardless of which kind we’re talking about.