Added sugar is just that; sugar that is added to food during processing or preparation of food. It is added to foods for a variety of reasons including adding flavor, improving texture, creating caramelized color and even acting as a preservative. Added sugars include refined cane sugar, unrefined coconut sugar, and sugars from syrups and honey. Some foods like milk, fruits and vegetables have naturally occurring sugars. Concentrated forms of foods with naturally occurring sugars can be used to sweeten foods in place of other sweeteners and therefore are also considered an added sugar, albeit healthier, when added to foods to sweeten them up!
Foods with added sugars include sugary drinks, baked goods and packaged goods. In general, these foods have a large amount of calories and no real nutritional value. They can be detrimental to health by contributing to weight gain, obesity, diabetes and heart disease when consumed in large amounts.
It is important to know how much added sugar is too much. There is not a recommended amount of added sugar, however there are guidelines for how much you should limit your intake. Someone who needs 2000 calories per day should limit their intake of added sugars to 50 grams per day and someone who needs 1500 calories per day should limit their intake of added sugars to 37 grams per day.
To put this into perspective, one teaspoon of sugar has 4 grams of sugar. This may not sound like much, but let’s take a look at how much added sugar is in some favorite foods and beverages.
- 12 oz can of Coke has 39 grams of added sugar
- 2 oz of Sour Patch Kids has 48 grams of added sugar
- ⅔ cup of vanilla ice cream has 23 grams of added sugar
- 3 Oreo Cookies has 14 grams of added sugar
- 1 Hershey chocolate bar has 21 grams of added sugar
- 8 oz margarita has 36 grams of added sugar
As you can see, added sugars can add up quickly if you don’t think much about your food and beverage choices throughout the day. This is exactly why I chose to do my own Simply Sweet Challenge; to bring awareness to the amount of added sugar I was consuming and change my behavior to reduce the amount of added sugar I consume on a daily basis.
-Megan
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