Dispelling Myths

How Much Is Too Much?

1. Why do you recommend that people follow the American Heart Association dietary limit for added sugar when there are others?

Currently, we do not have a federal dietary limit on sugar, like those for salt, trans fats and other food additives. Until we have one, we recommend that people rely on the recommendations of impartial, expert panels convened by nonprofit and governmental authorities. There is, however, a global recommendation provided by the World Health Organization, the health agency of the United Nations. 

The American Heart Association’s guideline is the most frequently used guideline by public health officials. It suggests limiting added sugar to less than 6 teaspoons/day (25 g) for women, 3-6 tsp. (12-25 g) for children, and 9 tsp. (36 g) for men. The World Health Organization limit is fairly similar:  It suggests that we should be consuming no more than 5% of our daily calories in added sugar, which amounts to about 25 g of added sugar in a 2,000-calorie diet. 

A panel convened by the Institute of Medicine recommended the highest dietary limit, that no more than 25% of daily calories should be consumed in added sugar.  We do not support this high a limit because studies have shown that consuming sugar at this level could significantly increase your chance of death from heart disease and stroke ,¹ as well as affect your metabolism in ways that put you at risk for a range of chronic diseases.²

2. You say that the average American consumes 19-1/2 teaspoons of added sugar every day.  I’ve heard that it’s 22 teaspoons. Where did you get this number?

The 22 teaspoons figure used to be correct, but Americans have started to cut back on added sugar consumption since then. To provide you with the most accurate and easily understood estimate, we used estimates from representative surveys of the US population conducted by the federal government, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2005-2010 (NHANES).³  Our estimate is averaged across men and women.  According to the survey, men tend to consume slightly more added sugar than women, but not enough to be significant.

We converted grams into teaspoons using the following conversion factor: There are 4.2 grams in one teaspoon of granulated sugar.

3. You say the average American consumes 66 pounds of sugar every year.  I’ve heard much different numbers. A lot of people say that we are consuming 150 pounds of sugar per year. Who’s right? 

You may hear many different estimates for how much added sugar Americans consume on a daily basis.  We fact-checked the numbers and are reporting to you what we believe are the most reliable, unbiased estimates.  The 150 lbs. figure refers to total sugar – all the sugars we consume throughout our diet. But the naturally occurring sugars in fruits and milk aren’t a concern for health; only added sugar is a concern. So, we calculated the amount of added sugar in the American diet – and 66 pounds is a lot.

Here’s how we did it: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conduct regular surveys of Americans that carefully measure what we eat, a study called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We used data from this survey for the most recent year, 2010, to arrive at our estimates. The CDC data are reported in calories-per-day of added sugar. Since that's not the easiest to figure for people to understand, we converted teaspoons and grams of sugar. There are 16.9 calories and 4.2 grams in a teaspoon of granulated table sugar.

Another source of data comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Each year, it quantifies the amount of sugar delivered for use as added sugar by consumers and the food industry.  Then USDA analysts make adjustments for the amount likely to be wasted, to estimate how much we probably consume. When we ran the numbers comparing the CDC and USDA data, we were reassured to find that the estimates were similar, indicating that our reported estimate is pretty reliable.

• ^[1]Ervin, R.B., & Ogden, C.L. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). NCHS Data Brief, No. 122: Consumption of Added Sugars Among U.S. Adults, 2005–2010. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db122.pdf
• ^[2]Stanhope, K., Bremer, A., Medici, V., Nakajima, K.., Ito, Y., Nakano, T., Chen, G., Fong, T., Lee, V., Menorca, R., Keim, N., & Havel, P. (2011, October). Consumption of fructose and high fructose corn syrup increases postprandial triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol, and apolipoprotein-B in young men and women. . J Clin Endocrinol Metab. , 96(10), E1596-605. doi:PMID: 21849529. Retrieved from http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2011-1251
• ^[3]Yang, Q., & Schmidt, L.A. (2014, February 3). Study Examines Consumption of Added Sugar, Death for Cardiovascular Disease. JAMA Internal Medicine . doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.12991. Retrieved from http://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/study-examines-consumption-of-added-sugar-death-for-cardiovascular-disease/