USDA Recommended Sugar Intake

Since sugar is not an essential nutrient, it has no recommended daily allowance, or RDA. Instead, it has the opposite: a recommended maximum amount to consume. That amount doesn’t seem unreasonable if you think about only granulated table sugar, but if you also consider the sugar added to thousands of common processed foods, it becomes much harder to stop short of the limit.

Sugar Limits

According to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, adults should not get any more than 10 percent of their daily calories from sugar. In a 2,000-calorie diet, that’s 200 calories from sugar, or approximately 12 teaspoons. The average American, however, eats around 22 teaspoons of sugar per day. Other organizations have different limit suggestions. The American Heart Association, for example, recommends women limit sugar consumption to 6 teaspoons (25 grams) per day and men limit to 9 teaspoons (36 grams) per day. The World Health Organization suggests getting no more than 5 percent of daily calories from sugar, or about 25 grams.

Added Sugar

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, most sugar in Americans’ diets is added sugar that comes from processed foods. Sweet breakfast cereals and sugar-sweetened beverages, such as sodas and fruit juices, contain some of the most added sugar of any processed foods, but there is also sugar lurking where you might never expect it. Foods like ketchup, mustard, salad dressing and yogurt might have added sugar lurking in their ingredient lists. At the recommendation of the Food and Drug Administration, some foods’ nutrition labels do state how many grams of added sugar they contain.

By Any Other Name…

If the nutrition label doesn’t list it directly, it can be a challenge to figure out how much added sugar a product contains, or even if it has any at all. Instead of listing “sugar” on a label, some products designate added sugar under other names, such as corn sweetener, crystalline fructose, dextrose, evaporated cane juice, maltose, sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup.

Cutting Back

Need to reduce your sugar intake? You’re not alone, and there are simple adjustments you can make in your diet that will add up to a big difference. Since breakfast cereal and sugar-sweetened beverages are two of the sweetest processed products available, start there. Instead of a sugary boxed cereal, have oatmeal or a lower-sugar boxed cereal, like Cheerios or corn flakes. If you have a soda habit, cut back by just one can or bottle a day to start. Or replace the soda with carbonated, flavored water or another beverage that is less sweet. Finally, read nutrition labels so you have better knowledge of what you’re eating with sugar in it – and which healthier alternatives you could choose instead.