Eating too much sugar can be harmful, addictive

Who hasn’t been in a relationship we know is bad for us, but one we just can’t quit? For many people, it’s like that with sugar. Breaking up is hard to do. “People generally know that sugar isn’t good, but they don’t appreciate how powerfully negative it really is,” says Donald Hensrud, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program. “If you look at all the things in our diet we can change, pulling away from refined or added sugar will do more good than anything else.”

Nutritional experts don’t suggest that you abandon the sugar that occurs naturally in fresh and frozen fruit. Rather, they’re talking about the stuff that you add to cookie dough or sprinkle onto your morning oatmeal. Sugar has many forms (high-fructose corn syrup, maltose, dextrose, maple syrup, brown sugar, molasses, raw sugar and honey, among others), but it’s still sugar. Manufacturers put it in countless processed foods, including soda, packaged cereals, ice cream, pastries, candy, flavored yogurt, granola bars and dried fruits. It’s also added to such products as salad dressings, ketchup and pasta sauces.

Eating too much sugar contributes to numerous health problems, including weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, dental caries, metabolic syndrome and heart disease, and even indirectly to cancer because of certain cancers’ relationship to obesity. It also can keep you from consuming healthier things. “Kids who are drinking sugar-sweetened beverages aren’t drinking milk,” Hensrud says.

Between 2003 and 2010, Americans consumed about 14 percent of their total daily calories from added sugars, much of it from sugar-sweetened beverages, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the 2015-20 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend an intake of added sugar of less than 10 percent of calories. In a 2,000-calorie daily diet, that means less than 200 calories. Ten percent would amount to about 50 grams of sugar, according to Hensrud, who points out that food labels list sugar per serving in grams, making it easy to calculate. (With four grams to a teaspoon, that’s about 12 teaspoons.)

While the World Health Organization also recommends a 10 percent limit, it stresses that 5 percent would be even better. That amounts to less than one serving (about 8 ounces) of a typical sugary drink, according to WHO. “The lower the number, the better,” Hensrud says.

Over the past 30 years, American adults’ consumption of sugar increased by more than 30 percent, from 228 calories a day to 300, according to a study released last year. “This is equivalent to eating an additional 15 pounds of sugar a year,” Hensrud says.