Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast, a show where I try to put the latest nutrition

headlines and research into perspective for you so you can make good decisions about

what to eat and I also love to answer listener questions.

And in fact, before I get into the main topic today, which is the World Health Organization's

recent recommendation on low calorie sweeteners, I want to answer a related question from Lynn.

She wrote, there's lots of material everywhere saying that sugar is bad and that if you eliminate

sugar from your diet, lots of good things are going to happen.

The only added sugar in my diet was the sugar in my morning tea and I cut this out entirely

for three months to see those benefits.

But the only thing I felt during those three months was a little extra tired.

Now I'm wondering whether sugar is really all that bad.

There are a lot of people out there saying that sugar is toxic and that you need to cut

sugar out of your diet entirely in order to be healthy.

But there's a popular saying in toxicology and that is the dose makes the poison.

So if you're consuming 30 or 40% of your daily calories in the form of added sugars, which

sad to say is not that unusual, then eliminating sugar from your diet for three months could

make a huge difference in how you feel and other markers of health.

But you know what, you'd probably get the same payoff by cutting your sugar consumption

down to say 5% of your daily calories.

Cutting it from 5% to 0% as blended probably wouldn't make much of a difference at all.

Sugar is not toxic, however, a moderate consumption of added sugars can definitely lead to problems,

which is why there is a multi-billion dollar market for sugar substitutes.

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