Sugar: What You Need to Know

Sugar—it's that sweet stuff we love, but it's more than just a treat. Here's the scoop in a sweeter way:

Types of Sugar

Sugar comes in two main types:

• Natural Sugar: Found in foods like fruits and milk, it's naturally part of what you eat.
• Added Sugar: This is the extra sweetness put into foods during processing or at the table.

Americans are sweet on added sugar, but too much can lead to trouble like tooth woes, weight bumps, and health hits like type 2 diabetes and heart issues.

How Much is Just Right?

Experts say keep added sugar under 10% of all you eat and drink in a day. For a 2,000 calorie diet, that's about 50 grams or 10 teaspoons daily.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends even less.

• Added sugars = no more than 100 calories per day
• About 6 teaspoons of sugar for women and 150 calories per day or about 9 teaspoons for men

The taste for sweets is learned. This means you can change your taste for sugar by slowly changing the amount of sugar in your diet and eating healthier foods.

Sweet Tricks to Cut Back

Want to kick your sugar habit? Try these tips:

• Check Labels: Look for sneaky sugars hiding in foods and make sure to double check how much is equal to one serving.
• • Ingredient List: Added sugars are called by many different names. Be on the lookout for white sugar, brown sugar, invert sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maple syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar, trehalose, turbinado sugar, and sucrose. A food is likely to be high in sugar if one of these terms appears first or second in the ingredient list.
• Snack Swap: Fruit beats cookies any day. Swap sugar cereals for unsweetened cereal with fruit.
• Slim Down Sweets: Bake with less sugar or try sugar-free swaps.
• Sip Smarter: Water is always best, but if juice is your jam, go for 100% fruit juice. Low-fat or fat-free milk is also a great option!

Sugar Substitutes: A Sweet Solution?

Sugar substitutes are super sweet but low on calories. You might also hear them called sugar alternatives, artificial sweeteners, non-nutritive sweeteners, or high-intensity sweeteners. Just watch out for overdoing it, especially for kids.

Meet the Sweet Substitutes Team

Here are the top picks:

• Acesulfame Potassium: Sweet One®, great for sodas and baking.
• Aspartame: Equal® or Nutrasweet®, not for those with PKU, but perfect in drinks.
• Saccharin: Sweet 'N Low®, a classic for cooking.
• Stevia: Truvia®, Stevia in the RAw®, SweetLeaf®, Sweet Drops™. From leaves, perfect for tea and beyond.
• Sucralose: Splenda®, bake away with no sugar blues.

Sugar Alcohols: The Low-Down

They're sweet and lower in calories than regular sugar but go easy on consuming these to avoid tummy troubles. When reading an ingredient list you might see erythritol, isomalt, lactitol, maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol, or zylitol.

Sources: USDA Infant Feeding & Nutrition – A Guide for Use in WIC, CDC, ODPHP, American Heart Association, FDA, Cleveland Clinic