I am thrilled that the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015 has a focus on added sugars. It was touch and go there in terms of whether or not the this recommendation would be added to the new guidelines. As you can imagine, the sugar industry will not be too happy about this and they lobbied hard to prevent it.
So how did the guidelines do? Well they set a limit that no more than 10% of one's daily calories should consist of added sugars and they called out the worst offender: sugar sweetened beverages. What I didn't like is that the limit they chose was so much higher than what the American Heart Association recommended with the 2010 guidelines: that up to 1/2 the empty calories (set in 2010) be used for added sugars. Take a look at the difference in the chart below. For a 4 year old in the new guidelines they can have 7 1/2 tsp of sugar and for a 14 year old boy 15 teaspoons a day, which is a lot more than about 4 and 8 teaspoons a day. It is a start though and for that I applaud the new guidelines.
So how did the guidelines do? Well they set a limit that no more than 10% of one's daily calories should consist of added sugars and they called out the worst offender: sugar sweetened beverages. What I didn't like is that the limit they chose was so much higher than what the American Heart Association recommended with the 2010 guidelines: that up to 1/2 the empty calories (set in 2010) be used for added sugars. Take a look at the difference in the chart below. For a 4 year old in the new guidelines they can have 7 1/2 tsp of sugar and for a 14 year old boy 15 teaspoons a day, which is a lot more than about 4 and 8 teaspoons a day. It is a start though and for that I applaud the new guidelines.
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