Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with your quick and dirty

tips for eating well and feeling fabulous a few weeks ago I did a show explaining how eating too much sugar affects your body and as a guideline

I suggested trying to limit your intake of added sugar to about 50 grams a day.

Now since then I've gotten a lot of questions from listeners about how to implement this suggestion.

So today a follow-up with answers to your questions about limiting added sugars.

So as I explained a couple of weeks ago, although a little bit of

sugar is okay for most people, eating too much sugar can undermine your health in

a lot of ways. Sugar can add excess calories to your diet, it can crowd out more nutritious foods. of is too much? Well the World Health Organization recommends that you limit your

intake of added sugar to 50 grams a day, which is about 12 teaspoons and this was

the guideline that I mentioned in my original show. For the average adult, 50 grams of sugar works out to about 10% of their total calorie intake.

Now some people would have you set that limit a lot lower.

In fact, the American Heart Association recommends just 25 grams of

added sugar a day. Of course you could try to eliminate 100% of the added sugar from

your diet, but that strikes me as unnecessarily austere. If you're

basically healthy and you have a reasonably nutritious diet and an active lifestyle,

I don't think a zero tolerance policy is necessary.

Honestly, because so many of today's health problems stem directly from excess sugar consumption,

I think any reduction would be a step in the right direction.

And because the typical American is currently consuming about 100 grams of added sugar a day,

cutting that in half seems like a good place to start.

Whether your goal is to eat only 25 grams of added sugar or 50, you need to know what counts as an

added sugar.

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