I have written a number of times about the sugar content in various foods, Why You Shouldn’t Drink McDonald’s Frozen Strawberry Lemonade is one example. The drink has 67 grams of sugar in 16 ounces. That amounts to 15 teaspoons full.
As is the case with salt, there is a lot of sugar hidden in processed foods. The key idea I try to get across here is there are 4.2 grams of sugar in a teaspoon. People read the sugar content in grams and it just doesn’t register with them.
WebMD has a nice quiz on sugar which you can take.
I actually did pretty well on it, missing only three. I will spot you the first one as it surprised me and is worth knowing.
How many teaspoons of sugar does the average American eat and drink every day?
WebMD says, “Talk about a sweet tooth. We eat and drink 22 teaspoons — or almost half a cup — of added sugar each day. That’s way more than the American Heart Association recommends: 6 teaspoons per day for women and 9 for men. Our sweets add up: Americans basically consume their weight — about 142 pounds — in sugar in just one year.
Added sugars include all kinds of sugars and syrups that are put in a product during processing to make it taste better. They have little nutritional value other than giving you extra calories”
It’s scary to me to see how much over the American Heart Association recommendation we eat every day. I think getting a handle on sugar consumption would be a great first step toward attacking out overweight and obesity problem here. Some 60 percent of us are overweight and 30 percent obese. Those are killing numbers.
Tony
