Is Sugar Bad? Is Fruit Bad? How Much Sugar Should I Eat Per Day? Here we go!

Let’s talk about sugar.

The average American can easily consume over 200g of sugar a day. Thats about 150g over the recommended daily dose for a healthy, exercising person. A sedentary and inactive person should actually consume even less. Have you ever looked at your sugar intake in a day? It can be eye opening and worth the effort. Use an app like MyFitnessPal to look up foods that you consume throughout the entire day and keep track of the total grams of sugar. You’ll not only get the number of grams that you ate but from this list you can also identify which foods contain the most sugar should you need to work on eliminating or substituting certain foods.

Sugars defined:

Sugar: A sweet crystalline substance obtained from various plants, especially sugar cane and sugar beet, consisting essentially of sucrose.

Sucrose = Glucose + Fructose

Glucose: A monosaccharide found in foods and in the blood. The end product of carbohydrate metabolism and the primary source of energy for humans.

Fructose: A naturally occurring sweetener found mostly in fruit . We ingest it when we eat fruit and also from food items that have been sweetened with it.

Fructose and Glucose differ by their chemical structure.

What happens when we eat too much sugar?

The main issue here is fat storage but not FROM the sugar but BECAUSE OF the sugar.

Here’s why:

When we consume food, large carbohydrate molecules can’t be absorbed by the body and need to be broken down into a monosaccharide (or glucose) and eventually released into the bloodstream. The process begins as soon as we start to chew.

Carbohydrate’s Chemical Structure:

Monosaccharides: The simplest form of a carbohydrate or 1 sugar.

Oligosaccharides: Short chains of carbohydrates or sugars linked together.

Polysaccharides: More than 10 linked monosaccharides.

The larger molecules (polysaccharides) begin to get broken down in the mouth by our saliva and then by the stomach and small intestine. Since we are talking about sugar today we’ll pick up with the food as it gets to our liver. Fructose is converted to glucose by the liver. When we consume fructose, our liver takes what it needs for energy and storage and then ships out the rest into our bloodstream. On average, we move about 20g of glucose through our blood every hour. Our body prefers to keep this more or less stable. If our blood sugar drops too low, the body will use glucose for energy. If our blood sugar goes too high, the liver and muscles will take as much as they can. THIS IS WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS. If there is still too much glucose around, our body has to work to burn it because of the surplus available and in-turn cannot work to burn dietary fat (fats from the food we have been eating) leading dietary fat to be stored as body fat. Read that line again if you need to! Our body ends up storing more dietary fat because it cannot burn it like it normally would because of the excess sugar that is around and needs to be processed.

Now let’s address fruit. Why is it ok?

Natural foods like fruit (not fruit juice, not dried fruit, not juiced fruit) don’t contribute to the problem as much because of their fiber, water and phytonutrient (or Phytochemicals, naturally occurring plant chemicals that can have protective qualities for human health) content. The fiber in fruit will naturally stop you from consuming large amounts of fruit which in turn stops you from over consuming sugar. An apple contains on average 19g of sugar. A cup of apple juice (just the juice w/o sweeteners) is about 3 apples worth of juice. Try to eat 3 apples at once and your stomach would likely begin to revolt before you could finish the serving.

Let’s look at some sugar content by the numbers.

BREAKFAST

Cereal and OJ: 45+g of sugar

“Big Coffee” (Frappuchino or Latte): 40+ g of sugar

SNACK

Nutrition bar: 20+ g of sugar

LUNCH

Chicken Wrap + Sweetened Drink (like Tea, Lemonade, canned Soda): 38+ g of sugar

DINNER

Meat, Potato, Side Salad, Wine: 10+g of sugar

SNACK

Low fat ice cream or yogurt: 30+ g of sugar

That’s nearing 200g of sugar and could be looked at as an average ‘healthy’ day. As you can see, sugar adds up… and adds up quick.

Bottom Line

The more whole, un-processed foods you can eat the better for your health. If you’re looking to begin eliminating some over processed and sugary from your diet… pick one item to attack at a time. Replace it with a whole, un-processed food and once that food becomes a staple in your diet… attack another!

Don’t forget to reach out if you have any questions or concerns!