Catherine Saxelby's Foodwatch | Q. We don’t buy much sugar these days, so where is all the sugar coming from?

Home Expert Advice FAQs - Healthy weight loss Q. We don’t buy much sugar these days, so where is all the sugar coming from?

Q. We don’t buy much sugar these days, so where is all the sugar coming from?

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A. Only about 25 per cent of the total sugar we consume comes from what we add to tea or coffee or use to bake muffins and desserts.

Most of the sugar we eat - around 75 per cent of the total – comes from everyday foods like biscuits, cakes, ice creams, fruit juice drinks and breakfast cereals, as well as the more obvious soft drinks, cordials, jams, chocolates and lollies. Of these, soft drinks and juice are the biggest, accounting for around 50 per cent of all the sugar we eat.

This is a dramatic reversal of the situation early in the 20th century. Up until the 1950s, most sugar was used at home to prepare jams, home-made cakes, bottled fruit and puddings as well as to sweeten tea and coffee. Despite this, our total intake has changed relatively little. It’s still a huge 50kg (100 pounds) a year !

How much sugar fits into a healthy way of eating? How much is in a bottle of sports drink? Or a doughnut? How can you tell from the label what's high and what's low?  Our  Fact Sheet on Sugar gives you all the answers in a short punchy two-page format. No long boring pages to read.  Just the facts with colour pictures.

 

Comments (3)

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Thanks for this answer and the fact sheet. I didn't realise how much sugar was in the cordial that I drink daily. Me thinks that I need to drink much less cordial.
Elizabeth9 , June 03, 2010
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Glad you liked this and the Fact Sheet. Isn't it interesting that you don't realise how much sugar you're taking in until you see it laid out as a chart or bar graph? I guess no-one thinks about the liquids they consume and how much sugar they contribute. Same can be said about fizzy drinks.

At least with cordial, you have the option of making it up more dilute (just a splash of cordial base in a glass) so you have some sweetening but without all the kilojoules/calories. No such option with a can of soft drink! Think this is important to point out especially in hot climates where plain water doesn't always refresh day after day.

Thanks for your observation. Regards Catherine

Catherine Saxelby , June 16, 2010
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Hi Catherine, thank you for taking the time to reply to my comment. smilies/smiley.gif
Elizabeth9 , June 20, 2010

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