Children Should Eat Less Than 25 Grams of Added Sugar Daily | Hacker News Reader

Children Should Eat Less Than 25 Grams of Added Sugar Daily

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34 pointsawqrre65 comments

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.

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).

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...

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.

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..

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.

>I think part of the problems is people don't realize how much sugar is in non sweet food.

Or rather that non-sweet food is actually hella sweet -- it's just not labelled "candy" but e.g. pasta sauce.

> non sweet food

'savoury'?

I think OP means foods that aren't classified as "sweets" (candies, cookies, cake, etc) also have sugar. High carbohydrate foods like pasta, bread, tomato sauce, all metabolize quickly to sugar, which acts on insulin levels in the same way "sweets" do.

Probably unhelpful sounding and possibly verging on overzealous but my general rule now is if it's in a packet and tastes good, it's probably over-indexed in any combination of fat, salt and sugar.

We have evolved to seek out these flavours as some time in our biological history, food and energy were scarce and we needed a means to efficiently target energy and nutrient-rich foods.

Nowadays R&D labs in food companies are testing the optimum combination of these flavours to exploit our most base of instincts tied to survival to keep us addicted to their products.[0] As long as food companies measure their performance with profit (which depends on volumes) they have a vested interest in getting us to eat more and not act out responsibly. For them not only is injecting fat/sugar/salt extremely effective - it's also extremely cheap.

Until we have even stronger guidelines from government and more encouragement for companies to sell healthy food, I don't see this problem going away - we regulate gambling, tobacco and alcohol yet food seems to have so far passed-by under the radar.

For now, cooking seems to be the safest way to stay healthy. For people who are looking to cut out fat and sugar from their cooking, spices and herbs are a great way to get great taste - chilli, garlic, onions, ginger, basil, lemongrass, lime and lemons are great sources of flavour that are pretty good for you!

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

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.

It has to do with the way the sugar gets metabolized. Actually the rate it gets absorbed and released in the bloodstream. A banana has a lower glycemic index than refined sugar. A gram of refined sugar will cause a blood sugar spike requiring a large amount of insulin to remove it from the blood. A banana, takes longer to digest and release the sugar meaning the sugar spike is smaller hence less insulin. Type 2 diabetes is thought to be caused by sugar spikes in the blood stream - the more insulin gets released at once the body builds tolerance to insulin and requires more and more to do the same work leading to diabetes.

check the following for a list of glucemic index in different foods: http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...

No. It has to do with the desire for a single, simple guideline that stands in for a bunch of different factors. It's right there in the article:

“Children who eat foods loaded with added sugars tend to eat fewer healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products that are good for their heart health,” Dr. Vos said.

“If your child is eating the right amount of calories to achieve or maintain a healthy body weight, there isn’t much room in their food ‘budget’ for low-value junk foods, which is where most added sugars are found,” Dr. Vos said.

This recommendation is coming from the American Heart Association. Diabetes is related to heart health, but they aren't making this recommendation based on an argument about sugar metabolism.

The original question was about what's different with sugar in a banana and refined sugar - I don't think it was in context with the article.

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.

Yes, exactly this. With the fruit comes fiber. Natural sugars, as long as they are consumed with their naturally occurring fiber, are fine. You can try to over-consume, but you'll have a bad time.

>fruits have fiber and vitamins and other redeeming qualities.

I wouldn't word it that way. A cake can have plenty of fiber, and you could make a cake with a lot more vitamins than fruit has. But the cake is still a bad choice, for reasons such as having 5-10x more calories per ounce.

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.

Mainly, the desire for easy instructions.

There is also the idea that there aren't that many people getting overweight by just eating bananas. In general, I think the belief is that nature has to add sugar with other things, so that the net is a benefit. When you add sugar, you can just add sugar. (Or, do you really think that dried sweetened cranberries have as many nutrients as two bananas?)

Fructose is not the same as sucrose -- and they have different properties. The same is true about how its consumed, and how fast it's absorbed.

(In fact fructose -- present in fruits -- can even be worse than table sugar: http://www.healthline.com/health-news/evidence-shows-some-su...).

That said, I seriously doubt the problems in american diet is "overconsumption of fruits", so they are quite right to stop people eating all the other sugary-containing crap first.

Sucrose is half fructose half glucose. In the body, the enzyme sucrase nearly instantaneously splits sucrose into fructose and glucose.

American serving sizes are extremely corrupt.

Its unusual to eat two bananas, so my "real world" breakfast is one banana or about 12 g carbs.

We sell unhealthy stuff in crazy small serving sizes to market it as healthy. When I eat junk food, like pasta and meatballs night, we use two boxes of Penne (some consider use of Penne to be sacrilege in itself) and the box is labeled as 8 fifty gram servings per box, although we make two boxes for four people and admittedly have plenty left over for lunch the next day. Sure that pasta sauce claims a mere 24 grams of carbs per serving, if you get 9 servings out of that little jar (we usually get about four servings). I don't eat junk food very often.

Lets compare guacamole dippers. For a good laugh look at the official legal serving size for potato chips. Like 10 chips. For real human beings its more like half a bag (if not the whole thing). An entire half pound "single serving" bag of baby carrots is about 80 calories. I pig out in front of the TV sometimes, the difference is I don't think its physically possible to get fat off carrots and guac and I eat like "half a zerving" and feel I've had enough, but obviously pretty easy to get fat off soda and chips and I can eat ten servings and feel hungry-ish. Ten servings of potatoe chips is only 100 or so chips ya know.

One thing I've figured out about "servings" is that the corporate nutritionists' mental model of dinner is a lot like a "balanced breakfast": they expect that instead of eating big portions of one or two things, you'll be eating the "recommended servings" of five-to-eight different things, each of which takes a half-hour to prepare.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

> Cornflakes is the blandest kind of cereal

Now, now, don't forget about bran.

25g is 100 calories. Out of more than 1000, possibly a lot more. It's not a very hard guideline to meet, but it's not a large amount either.

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.

Fat has actually been reduced rather significantly in ready made foods.

That said, you are almost certainly right that we have reduced the model below the complexity of reality. However, just as in machine learning, a simpler model often performs better on new data than a complicated one. Learning From Data (link: http://amlbook.com/), actually has a very good section explaining this.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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!

The problem is the costs of those actions are usually externalized to everyone else.

Only if you have socialized healthcare. Private deregulated healthcare internalizes these costs, solving the problem.

I agree that if everyone else is on the hook for your medical bills, they have a say over what you ingest. This, of course, is why I'm against everyone being on the hook for everyone else's medical bills...

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.

> 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.

The main reason children in the UK are hospitalised is to remove organs - their teeth.

This is entirely preventable with better oral hygiene and reduced sugar intake.

Plenty of parents give their children undiluted fruit juice in the mistaken belief it's healthy. Worse, they often do so in bottles with teats or sippy cups.

Have a look at the sugar content of drinks aimed at younger children, it's pretty bad.

Increasing the price of those sugary drinks would give parents a clear and useful signal.

Everything is unhealthy above some threshold. Sugar too, problem is, it's everywhere in disguise and it alters your sense of taste. Tax could reduce its presence. I just threw this out btw.

Sounds like you are an outlier in terms of your tolerance for sugar or the negative health effects. Maybe you aren't in the best position to evaluate what is the best broad policy to be imposed by the government on everyone.

You interpret this as me being an exception, I say I was a limit case in a nice experiment.

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.

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

I'm not sure about either (a) what kind of peanut butter you're eating or (b) how huge of a sandwich you've got.

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

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

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

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.

It depends on the season. Prices of natural peanut butter (by natural peanut butter I mean the only ingredients are peanuts and salt) are really cheap right now in September ($3.60 for me). But by February they can get up to $8.00 a jar.

Just checked the Jif peanut butter in the cupboard. 3g of sugar per serving. But yes with typical supermarket bread and jelly added, a lot more.

You can buy both peanut butter and fruit spread without added sugar. They taste much better then the sugar heavy brands.

This comment is a great microcosm of what's gone wrong in the US food supply. "Peanut butter" doesn't by definition require any ingredients other than peanuts. Want some added salt for flavor? Sure!

This is America though. So let's take those healthy salty nuts and mix in a few tablespoons of high-fructose corn syrup! Not just as an option - let's put that in every damn product we offer, except maybe a double the price "natural" option for yuppies. Same with yogurt - great, healthy food: almost impossible to find in a US supermarket without shitloads of added sugar.

I don't care about "what the market wants" comments, nor am I a fan of NYC-style "soda laws". I do think it ought to be borderline criminal that basically all the huge companies whose job it is to supply the US public with food have laced a majority of their otherwise healthy product lines with poison, to the point where the inability to find basic foodstuffs not laced with poison is just taken as a fact of modern life.

Blame the FDA. They are the ones who sent everyone into a panic over saturated fat 20 or 30 years ago, resulting in the trans-fat and sugar laden processed foods of today.

Wasn't it the USDA (US Dept. of Agriculture) that did that?

25 grams of sugar is about 5 teaspoons.

How the fuck does a peanut butter sandwich end up with that much sugar?

It's between 6-9g. Two tbsp of peanut butter is 3g, then 3-6g for the bread.

Now add a tbsp of jelly and it goes up 10g.

So you are talking 19g for a pb&j.

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

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.

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

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...

Well, the discussion was not about cholesterol, but about fat in general, about which the blog writes

> A better focus is on reducing saturated fat and trans fat in the diet, which play greater roles in damaging blood vessels than dietary cholesterol.

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...

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