After conducting an in-depth review of evidence, researchers have recommended limiting added sugar to 6 teaspoons a day and restricting consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to less than one weekly serving.
Significant associations were discovered between sugar consumption and 45 adverse health outcomes, such as depression, certain cancers, obesity, diabetes, asthma, heart disease and death.
As it’s well-known that eating too much sugar can have adverse health consequences, the WHO and other health organizations advise limiting added sugar consumption to under 10% of total daily energy intake.
Researchers conducted a systematic review to assess evidence quality, biases and validity for all studies that examined consumption of dietary sugar and health outcomes.
This review included 67 meta-analyses of observational studies and 6 meta-analyses of randomized controlled studies covering 83 health outcomes.
Quality was assessed and graded accordingly for each outcome: very low quality evidence was graded as very low quality while moderate or high-graded evidence earned high grades.
Dietary sugar consumption was associated with 18 metabolic/endocrine outcomes such as obesity, gout and diabetes; 10 cardiovascular outcomes like stroke, heart attack and hypertension; 7 cancer outcomes such as pancreatic prostate breast and other cancers as well as 10 other outcomes such as depression tooth decay asthma death etc.
Evidence of moderate quality indicated that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was significantly linked to greater body weight among those consuming the highest versus lowest intake, while any added sugar consumption led to greater muscle and liver fat accumulation.
Evidence of low quality suggests that each weekly serving increment of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with an 4% increase in gout risk; and each 250 mL/day increment consumption resulted in 17% and 4% increases respectively in coronary heart disease and death risk.
Evidence of low quality showed that each 25 gram increment consumed per day of fructose was linked with an increased pancreatic cancer risk of 22%.
No correlations were discovered between diet-induced sugar consumption and any positive health outcomes besides cardiovascular disease mortality, type 2 diabetes, total cholesterol, brain tumors or gliomas; researchers caution that such positive correlations aren’t backed up with sufficient evidence.
These findings demonstrate multiple health advantages of limiting sugar consumption to less than 25 g/day (roughly 6 teaspoons daily) and 1 weekly serving of sugar-sweetened beverages (roughly 200-355mL per week).
