Really? Most of the Added Sugar in Our Diets Comes From Sugary Drinks

ANAHAD O’CONNOR
The New York Times
May 6, 2013,

Americans as a whole consume too much sugar, that much seems to be clear. But where is most of the sugar in our diets coming from?

Pinning the blame on liquid calories like soda and other sweetened beverages seems easy enough. Since the 1970s, the average percentage of daily calories that comes from sugary drinks has more than doubled.

But new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that most of the added sugar in the American diet comes not from beverages, but from food. In its latest National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the agency reported that although soda and sugary drinks are obvious targets for public health campaigns, they make up on average a third of the calories from added sugars that Americans consume in a typical day — a significant amount, but not the lion’s share.

Nearly 70 percent of the calories from added sugars that Americans eat on a daily basis come from processed foods like breads, jams, cakes and ice cream. Added sugars can also be found in things like tomato sauce, condiments and salad dressings, and multigrain crackers and cereals.

Ingredients on food labels are usually listed in descending order by weight. So one way to spot a food product with high quantities of sugar is to look at whether sugar, in one form or another, is listed as one of the first few ingredients.

The government data showed slight differences in consumption based on age and gender. Women get more of their daily calories from added sugar than men, but not by much: 13.2 percent compared with 12.7 percent. And as people get older, their sugar intake, at least as a percentage of daily calories, tends to fall.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Most of the added sugar the average American consumes in a typical day comes from food, not drinks.