Just how much sugar do Americans consume?
Sugar has become the nutritional villain du jour, but just how bad is our addiction? The answer is tricky.
Philadelphia recently passed a tax on sugary drinks, several other places have proposed them, and the government this year recommended we limit our intake of added sugars to 10 percent of daily calories, underscoring how significant elected officials believe the problem is. But while determining exactly how much sugar we’re consuming is a complicated business — government figures are estimates — the data and industry trends indicate we’ve actually made progress in cutting back.
On average, Americans’ total consumption of caloric sweeteners like refined cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup is down 15 percent from its peak in 1999, according to government data. That’s when we consumed an average of 111 grams of sugar a day (423 calories).
After plateauing in recent years, consumption was down to 94 grams a day (358 calories) last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which calculates the figures by estimating how much of the caloric sweeteners produced are
A day after police in Oklahoma released video that shows a white Tulsa police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black man, attorneys representing the slain man’s family released photos that contradict a key claim in authorities’ version of events.
At a news conference Tuesday, attorney Benjamin Crump, who has represented many families of those killed in high-profile police shootings, said Terence Crutcher never reached his hands into the driver’s-side window of his stalled sport-utility vehicle before he was shot by police on Friday.
Crutcher, 40, couldn’t have reached into the vehicle, Crump said, because enhanced photos taken from police video show that the window was rolled up.