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The trend of today’s times is the so-called sugarfree diet, where you eliminate sugars if possible. Other studies, however, confirm that sugar is essential for brain development. So how is it? What is an acceptable daily dose?
First, let’s clarify one thing: sugars are a subset of carbohydrates. Other carbohydrates include, for example, fiber, whose consumption is on the contrary desirable, or other complex (compound) carbohydrates.
Sugar, on the other hand, belongs to simple carbohydrates, which also include fruit sugars. Simple sugars are converted into glucose very quickly in the body and immediately enter the bloodstream.
A rapid rise in blood sugar triggers a quick release of a large amount of insulin. However, this causes a sharp drop in blood sugar, which in a person manifests as intense hunger or cravings for more sweets.
And when you give the body that sugar, you suddenly have an excess of sugars. These are stored as reserves in the form of fatty tissue.
Complex carbohydrates break down more slowly and do not cause such sharp fluctuations in blood sugar. They keep you full for longer, so a person eats fewer calories but does not starve. And that is important.
If we had to limit something, it is therefore not carbohydrates in general, but simple sweet sugars. However, our body cannot do without them either.
So how much should you eat to make it beneficial?
There is no recommended daily amount of sugar for an adult or a child (as there is, for example, for vitamins).
According to the recommendations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, added sugar should make up at most 10% of daily caloric intake.
If you count on eight thousand kilojoules per day, then your daily sugar allowance comes out to 40–50 grams, which is approximately 8–10 small cubes per day (or 4–5 large ones). As for fruit sugar, its amount should not exceed 300 grams per day!
The World Health Organization and the American Heart Association have even stricter recommendations: according to them, women should not eat more than 5 small sugar cubes per day (approx. 25 grams).
What does that mean in practice?
Skipping ten sugar cubes that we put into tea or coffee sounds quite simple. Thinking about the sugars in chocolate bars, pastries, and sweet drinks is still manageable; it’s worse beyond that.
Added sugars are found in yogurts, dairy products, cereal bars, breakfast porridges, and flakes.
Natural sweeteners, like honey or agave syrup, are still sugars, although compared to white sugar they may contain, for example, enzymes or minerals.
Added sugar is also present in dried fruit and dried meat. Therefore, one has no choice but to watch the values on food packaging and see how many carbohydrates and how much of them are sugars the product contains.
And if calculating and converting to grams or cubes is difficult for you, a simple guideline is given by the well-known American nutrition counselor Brigitte Zeitlin: “Choose products that have less than 10 grams of sugar per 100 grams of product.”
