
Children Should Eat Less Than 25 Grams of Added Sugar Daily - awqrre
http://www.sci-news.com/medicine/children-added-sugars-04125.html
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bruceb
I think part of the problems is people don't realize how much sugar is in non
sweet food. Cheaper spaghetti sauce often has hi fructose corn syrup but one
might never guess it.

I have starting reading the label of any packaged food more frequently and
have been surprised how much sugar is lurking in many non obvious items.

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kyriakos
I am a bit obsessed with food ingredients so I always read the labels. I
noticed there's sugar in most ready made sauces and ready made meals. Indian
sauces, pasta sauces, and salad dressings all have a lot of sugar.
Surprisingly you can find added sugar in mexican spice mixes and most bread
types (probably not a lot but I never understood why).

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headShrinker
American Indian, American Chinese, and American Thai food are all cooked with
huge amounts of sugar. It's kind of gross when you realize how much sugar is
in curry or general Tao's chicken, chicken tamarin, volcano chicken...

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mikeash
My Chinese in-laws cook some dishes using an insane amount of ketchup, while
telling me to eat less sugary foods. They were rather shocked when I pointed
out that ketchup is basically sugar syrup with some tomato added.

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kyriakos
There's a lot of people who have misconceptions about sugar unfortunately.
E.g. my mother in law made a cake she, told me there's no sugar in it, i tried
it was very sweet. She then said "yes i only used honey and sweet canned milk
but no sugar". Technically she didn't cane sugar directly but if all the
ingredients contain it..

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derefr
A lot of people assume there's something uniquely bad for you in the structure
of granulated table-sugar crystals, I think. Maybe it's because they're often
found as a white powder. ;)

Of course, what's "bad for you" is just that humans can metabolize sugars as
easily and fully as they do. To get away from that, you either need non-sugars
(aspartame et al), or sugar alcohols.

Personally, I kind of wish everything with HFCS just replaced it all with
xylitol or somesuch, but apparently people really like feeding leftovers to
their dogs.

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guelo
I've been confused by the recent emphasis on added sugars. Why does it make a
difference where the sugar comes from? Two bananas also have 25g of sugar but
somehow it's different according to this guideline. Maybe it comes from a
reluctance to telling people not to eat fruits and vegetables.

~~~
beachstartup
fruits have fiber and vitamins and other redeeming qualities.

maybe you're one of those people who think fiber and vitamins are useless and
that 1000 calories of chocolate cake is identical to 1000 calories of chicken
and broccoli, maybe not, but that's the reason.

also, do you know anyone who overeats bananas, or other fruit? now, do you
know anyone who overeats foods with added sugar? one of these is common, one
is not, and probably never will be.

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derefr
Personally, I'd rather just make a smoothie out of hemp and a multivitamin
(and magnesium, some fish oil, etc.) to get all the nutrition with no sugar,
rather than worry about solving a complex system of "redeeming qualities." But
then, I'm one of those crazy MealSquares/nootropics people.

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kyriakos
25g is quite a lot actually when we are talking about "added" sugar. I did a
rough estimate of how much my son eats/drinks per day and it's not more than
15g. Maybe it's harder to stay under in USA though.

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tomatsu
A bowl of cereal and a can of pop and you're way over the budget. If you then
add some processed food, you'll consume even more sugar.

Even seemingly harmless stuff like baked beans, pasta sauce, or toast contain
quite a bit of sugar.

~~~
kyriakos
25g is about 6 spoons (google says there's 4g per spoon). Kellog's Cornflakes
have 8g sugar per 100g serving. A scoop of ice cream has around 15g. So if
your child avoid regular soda's and milkshakes, drink natural juices instead
of sweetened 25g seems quite decent.

~~~
tomatsu
As far as sugar goes, juice is the same as coke. Unlike fruits, juice lacks
fiber. The sugar is absorbed instantly.

> _A scoop of ice cream has around 15g._

The problem is that pretty much anything contains sugar.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2993513/Pasta-
sauc...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2993513/Pasta-sauce-sugar-
Mars-bar-soup-sweet-cider-reveal-white-stuff-lurking-favourite-foods.html)

Cornflakes is the blandest kind of cereal and that one already contains a
whopping 8g (32% of your budget). Add some toast, pasta sauce, some low fat
yogurt, etc and you're way over those 25 grams of sugar.

By the way, Cornflakes are actually worse than they seem. Simple carbs are
almost instantly turned into sugar.

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derefr
> Cornflakes is the blandest kind of cereal

Now, now, don't forget about bran.

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ahallock
Concentrating on grams of sugar seems highly reductive. Usually foods with
added sugar are also high in fat, additives, food coloring, etc. I think it's
a combination of these things.

~~~
DanBC
> Usually foods with added sugar are also high in fat,

Things like low fat yoghurt often use large amounts of sugar to improve mouth
feel. The 80s war on fat in food has been pretty terrible for public health,
allowing bags of 100% sugar candy to be sold with big "Fat free!" stickers.

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tomjen3
Children arguably shouldn't eat added sugar, or much non-added sugar in the
first place. 25 grams a day when we have an obesity epidemic is probably way
too high.

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wyager
25g of sugar is under 100 Calories. This is not a substantial contribution to
the caloric intake required to sustain obesity.

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agumonkey
Having been "forced" out of sugar by my own body, I can attest sugar is
borderline a drug and almost all (if not simply all) processed food is coated
with sugar (or fat and salt) to make them more appealing than necessary. Now
out of disease I can also attest how easy it is to go back to unhealthy diets
and lifestyles.

Governments should tax this and give subventions to those who wants to reach a
more active healthy lifestyle.

~~~
wyager
Something is enjoyable and has mildly negative health effects? Better tax it!
Can't trust adults to decide for themselves if the risk of drinking, smoking
pot, or God forbid, eating sugar!

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swombat
These are not mildly negative health effects. There has been an enormous rise
in diabetes and obesity, including in children. Large numbers of people are
dead because of these side effects and there are enormous costs imposed on the
health system.

~~~
wyager
> These are not mildly negative health effects.

Yes they are. Life expectancy changes from median sugar intake are negligible.

> There has been an enormous rise in diabetes and obesity, including in
> children.

People have been eating a ton of sugar since the British started colonizing
sugar cane producers. The rise in diabetes and obesity coincides with
improving nutritional access. As people eat more, they get fatter. Big
surprise. The solution is not to tax the shit out of food.

> there are enormous costs imposed on the health system.

So internalize those externalities and make people pay for their own health
care.

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apolymath
This post should be renamed to "Children Should Eat Zero Grams of Added Sugar
Daily" because sugar is more harmful than alcohol, cigarettes, and sitting
idly in your office chair all day.

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madengr
Sounds damn near impossible. I'll wager a peanut butter sandwich has more than
that, not accounting for jelly.

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healthnutter
Try eating natural peanut butter. The only listed ingredient should be
peanuts. Very healthy.

~~~
infinite8s
Have you noticed that the price of natural peanut butter is almost 2 times
that of the sugar-adulterated peanut butter?

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emidln
I wonder if this is purely price discrimination or if requiring more peanuts
means the cost is actually higher (relative to using HFCS).

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VLM
Nut quality. Try eating a bitter rancid old peanut alone and then smothered in
corn syrup.

The more sugar you add, the lower quality/cheaper of a nut you can use.

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sreya
25 grams of sugar is less than a bottle of gatorade...Most kids aren't even
close to this target

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djsumdog
This concept should be extended to adults and should include starches and not
just sugar.

A few years back I dropped to <100g of carbs per day (excluding fibre) and
went from 70kg to 61kg and have stayed that way for years.

All the research shows cholesterol and fat has nothing to do with heart
disease. The leading factor in heart disease is inflammation, and excess sugar
damages the arteries causing inflammation. Cholesterol build up is a result of
your body constantly trying to repair the damage caused by excess sugar.

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shanusmagnus
"All the research" and "nothing to do with" are both huge oversimplifications
/ exaggerations of what otherwise might be a good point.

~~~
sunnyps
Then you should provide a citation. Here's a quote from the Harvard health
blog[1]:

"A summary of the committee’s December 2014 meeting says “Cholesterol is not
considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” Translation: You don’t
need to worry about cholesterol in your food.

"Why not? There’s a growing consensus among nutrition scientists that
cholesterol in food has little effect on the amount of cholesterol in the
bloodstream. And that’s the cholesterol that matters."

[1] [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-
warni...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warning-
about-cholesterol-in-food-201502127713)

~~~
shanusmagnus
Cholesterol in food is not what almost anybody has been concerned about for
the last twenty years. Cholesterol produced in the blood as a result of
saturated fat intake, or as a consequence of lipid metabolism in the face of
tonically elevated glucose load, is another matter.

Anyway, a starting point for your literature review on a contrary school of
thought (which is, at present, the dominant school of thought) can be found at
the American Heart Association [1].

[1]
[http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nu...](http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/HealthyLiving/HealthyEating/Nutrition/Saturated-
Fats_UCM_301110_Article.jsp)

