How Much Sugar Can I Have, Then?

The WHO recommends five teaspoons of sugar a day. It’s easy to keep track of the sugar we add to our tea, but it’s important to watch out for less obvious sources.

Sugar itself is not the demon—the devil is in the dose. The WHO recommendation refers to refined sugars—not the sugars naturally contained in whole fruit and dairy products.

Obvious sources of added sugar are sweets and cakes, but it’s worth checking how much sugar is in processed foods such as ketchup, spreads, bread, and ready meals, because you’ll almost certainly find they contain more sugar than you thought—making it all too easy to accidentally go over the recommended daily limit. In fact, more than two-thirds of supermarket packaged goods have some added sugar. Sugar can come in many guises—if you see dextrose or sucrose on the list of ingredients, they’re simply chemical names for types of sugar.

It’s unfair to liken sugar to a drug such as cocaine, as many people and even some scientists now suggest. Sweetness is a basic taste that gives us happiness and satisfaction via a hearty squirt of dopamine in the brain’s reward areas.

You can live without refined sugar, but there isn’t any evidence that ridding every trace of it from your diet will make you healthier—so just enjoy it in moderation.

Secret sugar

It can be a shock to see how much hidden sugar there can be in processed foods. Just one serving of this fruit yogurt can push the limit of your daily sugar allowance.