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The Food and Drug Administration proposed on Friday that a maximum of 10 percent of the calories we eat should not be exceeded whilst consuming added sugars.
The original, unprocessed carbohydrate we call sugar is found in nature in different and multiple forms: sucrose (sugar cane and beets), lactose (yogurt and milk) and fructose (honey and fruits).
The term added sugar means exactly what it sounds like: adding sugar to foods, either packaged or processed foods, that don’t particularly taste sweet. Even the choices we’d consider healthy might just as well have extra-sugar.
So, it is recommended that a 10 percent of extra-calories consumed of extra-sugar not to be exceeded, whereas there’s the famous “cut back on added sugars” recommendation.
Susan Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said that the consumers have indeed been advised to reduce the intake of added sugars, over the past decades, whereas the Nutrition Labels are prone to help consumers to keep track of the added sugars percentage.
It has been said that a recommended intake of sugar for an average individual can range from: 6 to 15 teaspoons a day.
The FDA’s move has been called a public health achievement, of epic proportions, by The Center for Science in the Public Interest, but the Sugar Association claimed that there’s not enough scientific evidence to justify the labeling project, initialized by the FDA.
The FDA stated, in defense, that the proposal is open to the general public, with free public commentary for around 75 days. Their idea, on the other hand, was to make the labels more user-friendly and in less of a disordered state.
According to Damon Gameau, Australian actor and film-maker, people must read the nutrition label, in order to find out which the added sugars are in one’s daily nutrition, and how to figure out where the sugar is.
There’s a rule of 4 principles when it comes to added sugars in the diet: one has to limit and not to eliminate the added sugars in the diet; according to the FDA, a 10 percent of daily calories from added sugars shouldn’t be exceeded; the third rule would be for one to use the “rule of 4” which allows one to calculate the daily sugar share/input – for instance you start using the first 3 numbers for the 10 percent sugar goal (2.000 calories is 200; 2.500 is 250); then you have to divide the number by 4 to obtain daily sugar grams, and by 4 again to obtain daily sugar teaspoons; last, but not least, the fourth rule is to read the nutrition label thoroughly.
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