Recommendations target sugary drinks for children, adults

Panel urges reducing added sugars to 6% of daily calories.

WASHINGTON — The future may not be so sweet.

The committee assembled to help formulate the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is taking aim at sugar-sweetened beverages and added sugars.

The group is advising a reduction in the amount of added sugars consumed by children and adults. The committee, a group of 20 doctors, registered dietitians and public health experts, recommends reducing added sugars to 6% of daily calories, from 10%. The previous Dietary Guidelines took a major step forward in 2015 by suggesting added sugars be limited to 10% of total daily calories, but leading health organizations, supported by science, have long argued that lower limits would better protect health.

And for the first time, the committee made recommendations for children up to 2 years old, suggesting a ban on sugar-sweetened beverages. The experts argued that calories from sugar-sweetened beverages may displace those from nutritious foods and increase the risk of the child becoming overweight.

The advisory committee’s report guides the Department of Health and Human Services and the Agriculture Department in determining the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which help shape federally funded food assistance programs and the contents of school lunches, how foods are labeled and what our doctors exhort us to avoid or embrace.

With half of American adults suffering from one or more preventable, chronic diseases and about two-thirds of U.S. adults overweight or obese, the committee’s recommendations come at a critical time.

People with diet-related diseases are at higher risk during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And there has been greater national scrutiny of systemic racism and the ways in which it compromises the health and well-being of people of color.

Americans consume an average of 17 teaspoons of added sugar daily. Added sugars intake is higher among adults who are younger, less educated, less affluent and less physically active.