Sugar on My Fitness App diary

jeffbrum77

If I followed the maximum recommendation for sugar intake at 82 grams per day on the My Fitness Pal app, it would translate to 66 pounds of sugar per year. Maybe the recommendation should be revised down considerably.

deannalfisher

Sugar isn’t inherently bad for you - it’s when higher amounts of sugar crowd out other nutrition needs that ppl run into issues and that 84g includes naturally occuring (fruit etc) as well as added

lemurcat2

jeffbrum77 wrote: »

If I followed the maximum recommendation for sugar intake at 82 grams per day on the My Fitness Pal app, it would translate to 66 pounds of sugar per year. Maybe the recommendation should be revised down considerably.

It's 15% of your total calories.

Also, do you understand that it includes sugar in vegetables, fruits, dairy, and other foods (like corn, sweet potatoes, many many others)?

The WHO and other organizations recommend no more than 10% (and ideally no more than 5% from ADDED sugar, because of the associated calories (often from fat) and lower nutritional value in many foods with lots of added sugar), but there really are no credible reasons to worry about foods with intrinsic sugar so long as you are getting in adequate veg (which will add sugar!), protein (of course), and a good range of healthy fat (including omega 3).

Picking at random, I found a day on which I ate 50 g of sugar in 1500 cal, so over 13%, similar to the MFP goal, and my only sources of sugar were:

butternut squash
spinach
brussels sprouts
fennel
tomatoes
strawberries (about 40 cal worth)
radicchio
zucchini
broccoli
mushrooms (yeah, about a gram of sugar)
mixed beans
apple (88 cal)
plain dried pasta (yep, again about a gram)
cashews (about 1.5 g)

The largest single source was the apple -- and eating an apple is hardly something to avoid -- but the other foods all added up.

So no, I absolutely do not think MFP's goal is too high.

comptonelizabeth

As said above, it includes all sugars, not just added ones. You don't have to stick to it, you can set your own goals. Recently when I had to cut out added sugar prior to a blood test, my sugar level in my diary for that day was still around 40 because of naturally occurring sugars in my food.