Sugar, like any food, can have a place in a healthy diet. The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend limiting calories from added sugars to no more than 10% of your total daily caloric intake. The American Heart Association takes it a step further and recommends women limit added sugars to less than 100 calories (24g) per day and men limit to less than 150 calories (36g) per day no matter what is your daily caloric intake. So, it’s a good idea to limit sugary processed foods, but what about the sugars you get in whole foods such as fruit?
Because naturally occurring sugar in whole foods, such as fructose and glucose in a piece of fruit, also contains fiber, the sugar is digested differently in your body. Researchers from UCSF state in their SugarScience blog, “If the sugar comes with its inherent fiber (as with whole fruit) then up to 30% of this sugar will not be absorbed. Instead, it will be metabolized by the microbes in the gut, which may improve microbial diversity and help prevent disease.” In addition, eating sugars that naturally occur in a food with fiber allows the sugar to be digested slower and creates a more gradual rise in blood sugar, instead of a spike, which also has health benefits.
Fortunately, nutrition fact labels now have a separate line showing “added sugars” so you can more easily distinguish between sugar that is added during food processing and sugar that occurs naturally in a food. This is important to know since a diet with excessive amounts of added sugar has been linked to chronic health issues such as unwanted weight gain, increased inflammation, diabetes, fatty liver, and heart disease, just to name a few.
Even with all this information, you can be confident that added sugars can still be part of a healthy diet. However, next time you go to the store check out the amounts of added sugar in the foods you consume regularly. You may find a lower sugar alternative that is just as good and be able to make room in your healthy diet for those special occasion treats.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/too-much-sugar#TOC_TITLE_HDR_6
https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-metabolism.html#.YAsGsJNKjeo
Posted 1/2021
Well Balanced Eating 