Last month my 10 year old daughter presented her science fair project at her school. She spent some time testing glucose levels in different foods. As part of the project she did some background research on sugar and made a visual comparison between the amount of sugar that is recommended on a daily basis versus that actually consumed by people. The image below shows a plate with 6 teaspoons of sugar, the maximum amount recommended for adult women, and a second plate with 19 teaspoons of sugar, the actual amount consumed on average by humans. The visual contrast is striking!
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| Left: Average sugar consumed per day on average by humans. Right: Recommended maximum daily sugar intake for adult women. |
Clearly humans are consuming far more sugar on a daily basis then is recommended. Limiting sugar intake is tough because sugar tastes good and many pleasing food products contain sugar. For example, a 12 ounce can of regular soda contains approximately 40 grams of sugar. That's the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar...in a SINGLE CAN!!! That's already 4 teaspoons above the recommended maximum sugar intake for women. For men the recommended sugar intake is 9 teaspoons. The can of soda tops that!
This science fair project was a great way for my daughter to visually see how much sugar is too much per day and also gave her ideas on which foods have a lot of sugar. Science fair project results will come soon, but I just wanted to take a few moments to share this image because it is very revealing. We are addicted to sugar and eating a low sugar diet is not easy.
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