It honestly should say something along the lines of:
-Most nutritionists agree you shouldn't have more than 5g of sugar outside of fruit sources-
A can of coke have well over 25g
-Most nutritionists agree you shouldn't have more than 5g of sugar outside of fruit sources-
A can of coke have well over 25g
Do they? seems like a weird random number.
It’s an arbitrarily chosen number. Just like most thinking around food and diet, these things are highly influenced by current trends.
Obsessing over arbitrarily specific numbers in your diet is missing the point. Just make a conscious effort to consume sugar in moderation and you’ll be fine.
Sugar is bad for you? Fine. Any given unit of sugar will have worse outcomes than the absence of that sugar? Fair enough.
"Hey, we're reporting 5g as some special, significant threshold that suggests we have actual evidence of things really ramping up at that point that suggests no subjective gain could outweigh the damage to your health, when, in reality, it was just pulled out of thin air"? No. Forget that noise.
I can't find a specific source for a ceiling of 5 g/day, but it's pretty uncontroversial that more added sugar is never better. The lower you set your maximum intake, the harder it is to maintain, since sugar is added to so many foods.
5 g/day is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff that's lower than official recommended maximums, but this doesn't imply that there should be no limit. Pick one. Or start with "as little sugar as practical," log how much sugar you end up consuming under this plan (using a food diary, food scale, etc.), and adjust as needed.
[1] http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-growing-concern-of-overcons...
I don't know what this means. Are you referring to the manual that came with human existence or are you referring to what the FDA says?
To address your analogy, researchers are in a sense writing the Missing Manual for Humans, as our species didn't come with one.
You're free to accept or refute these recommendations, but I personally am inclined to put at least some trust into their collective efforts. Or if you trust different recommendations more so than these, I'd love to see them.
This mentality coupled with incorrect recommendations helped the trend of "fat free" foods that would be high in sugar, not that long ago either.
I have to say I find your pushback at the term "official" perplexing. Why do you disagree with this descriptor? They're literally official. It doesn't get more official than this. Sure, they're sometimes wrong, as your fat-free reference suggests, but that's beside the point.
Gatorade for athletes.
> this doesn't imply that there should be no limit.
Who is even claiming these things. :/
It's kind of like the difference between drinking a beer on a full stomach versus an empty stomach.
In this case, 25g of sugar entering your bloodstream quickly is quite unhealthy.
(Related: If you want to understand this better, stop consuming refined sugar for about a month. Then go eat a peep on an empty stomach. You'll feel an intense sugar rush.)
> Most nutritionists agree you shouldn't have more than 5g of sugar outside of fruit sources-
So nutritionists do or don’t agree that it should also include vegetable sources?
Related: I’m T1 diabetic and my partner had to call 911 last week because of hypoglycemia. If I hadn’t consumed 25g of sugar quickly the result would’ve been quite unhealthy.
Starchy vegetables like potato, corn, and peas are nutritionally distinct from non-starchy veggies. But their sugar is packaged with vegetable fibre, which results in slower absorption than if you drank the same amount of sugar in liquid form on an empty stomach.
It feels a bit redundant to point out to a T1D that fruits are far higher in sugar than non-starchy veggies, which is why OP specifically mentioned fruit sources of sugar.