2024-01-18 19:17:10
No matter how delicious cakes, donuts and soft drinks are, sugar often has a somewhat negative aftertaste. If you eat too many sugar bombs, you will see the number on the scale creep up after a while. Or your dentist discovers a new cavity in your tooth. But sugar also provides you with energy and is virtually impossible to avoid. What are the guidelines for how many grams of sugar you can eat per day?
What types of sugar are there?
Many different foods contain sugar to a greater or lesser extent. There are natural sugars and free sugars. The first variant occurs naturally in food, such as the sugars in fruit, vegetables and milk. Free sugars mainly include added sugars. Think of sugar in cookies, sauces, soft drinks and the lump that you stir into your coffee or tea.
Is one type of sugar healthier than another? In principle not, says the Nutrition Center. Your body does not distinguish between sugar from an apple and sugar from a piece of cake. Your body breaks down all sugars into glucose, which serves as fuel in your body.
Also read: Does a more stable blood sugar level help your running performance?
How many grams of sugar are you allowed per day?
Even if you never give in to a piece of cake or a cookie, you will consume sugar every day. But how many grams of sugar are you ‘allowed’ to eat per day? That’s not such a simple question to answer. In the Netherlands there is no official number that is recommended as an upper limit. The Health Council’s guidelines on healthy eating recommend drinking as few sugary drinks as possible. But it is not stated how much sugar fits into a healthy diet.
Some other organizations from abroad do provide advice on how many grams of sugar you should eat per day. The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommends getting less than 10 percent of your total calories in a day from added sugars. The World Health Organization also sets the upper limit at 10 percent. In concrete terms, this means that as an adult woman you can eat about 50 grams of added sugar per day, which is equivalent to about 10 sugar cubes. Men can eat an average of 60 grams of added sugar. Many people in the Netherlands exceed this by far. According to figures from the Diabetes Fund, we eat an average of 57 grams of added sugars per day. That’s about 14 sugar cubes.
Also read: why sugar makes you tired
The conclusion about (added) sugars
This advice mainly concerns eating added sugars. These health organizations do not provide advice on the total amount of sugars you should eat. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has also not set an upper limit for sugar, but does recommend limiting added sugars as much as possible. The conclusion is virtually the same for all these organizations: it is better to eat an apple than a cake. And if you do go for that pastry, enjoy it in moderation.
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