Recommended Sugar Allowance?

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klgpal
klgpal Posts: 2
in Food and Nutrition
I just started using this application and I really like it. It seems excellent for tracking calories consumed and burned, and the additional nutritional and caloric category information may prove useful. I intend to use this app for tracking calories, and do some additional personal bookkeeping to make sure I maintain a balanced diet.

This is my first time looking over all of the nutritional information and trying to plan out a proper diet (I grew up with the Food Pyramid, so now I've read through the latest round of government recommendations at: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/DGAs2010-PolicyDocument.htm). All the nutritional numbers provided by myfitnesspal make general sense to me and generally match what the USDA suggests, except for the recommended daily allowance for sugar. I'm trying to figure out whether myfitnesspal is way off-base or if I need to drastically cut sugar from my diet somehow. The recommended sugar number just seems unrealistically low.

The USDA recommends something like 3 cups of dairy products and 2 cups of fruit per day assuming a 2000 calorie diet. Those items alone would put me over the daily sugar allowance suggested by myfitnesspal. So where does this sugar number come from? Maybe myfitnesspal only intended to count "added sugars" and not all sugars. The USDA suggested daily allowance for added sugar is about 32g (about what you'd get from one can of soda), and that's not much lower than what myfitnesspal lists for me as its total recommended allowance for sugars.

Replies

  • arl1286
    arl1286 Posts: 276 Member
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    Bump because I've been wondering the same thing. Between my banana and almond milk at breakfast, I'm already over the limit.
  • Lochlyn_D
    Lochlyn_D Posts: 492 Member
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    Try unprocessed milk. Much less sugar. I myself don't drink milk or eat much dairy. Instead I take a calcium supplement. Milk is no good for humans anyway. I mean, think about it, would you give human breast milk to anyone but a human baby? No. Then why are you drinking a cow's breastmilk?

    I never exceed my sugar and it is set at 30g.

    I did notice that when you log some exercise, the allotted amount will go up. Try to exercise more if you want more sugar. Remember, sugar is just a carbohydrate.

    I stopped logging my fruit because. yes, a few bananas will put you right over. Now I just add the calories using *Add Quick Calories*
  • lakupsch
    lakupsch Posts: 5
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    I believe MFP's sugar numbers are added sugars only. Natural sugars such as fruits and lactose get added to that number, but do not count as added sugars. Personally, I figured out approx how many natural sugars I eat per day and custom set my number based on both added and natural sugars. It takes a quick look at my diary to see what sugars are added and what sugars are natural, but it does "work" for me at least. Ideally, MFP would track both added and natural sugars, but as of right now they do not. There are several threads suggesting they do this, but no luck yet. I imagine it would be difficult as something like sweetened yogurt has 12g natural sugars and 10 to 12g added.
  • pittbullgirl
    pittbullgirl Posts: 341 Member
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    Try unprocessed milk. Much less sugar. I myself don't drink milk or eat much dairy. Instead I take a calcium supplement. Milk is no good for humans anyway. I mean, think about it, would you give human breast milk to anyone but a human baby? No. Then why are you drinking a cow's breastmilk?

    I never exceed my sugar and it is set at 30g.

    I did notice that when you log some exercise, the allotted amount will go up. Try to exercise more if you want more sugar. Remember, sugar is just a carbohydrate.

    I stopped logging my fruit because. yes, a few bananas will put you right over. Now I just add the calories using *Add Quick Calories*

    Ohh, good idea on the quick add calories! Maybe that way I wont go over my sugars since I eat a decent amt of fruit. I typically dont care if I have *some* processed sugar but I have yet to figure out what good healthy number is. I cant go by MFP b/c I always go over in natural sugars anyway.
  • enveigle
    enveigle Posts: 1
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    I believe MFP's sugar numbers are added sugars only. Natural sugars such as fruits and lactose get added to that number, but do not count as added sugars. Personally, I figured out approx how many natural sugars I eat per day and custom set my number based on both added and natural sugars. It takes a quick look at my diary to see what sugars are added and what sugars are natural, but it does "work" for me at least. Ideally, MFP would track both added and natural sugars, but as of right now they do not. There are several threads suggesting they do this, but no luck yet. I imagine it would be difficult as something like sweetened yogurt has 12g natural sugars and 10 to 12g added.

    how did you custom set your sugar number?
  • susannamarie
    susannamarie Posts: 2,148 Member
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    What? Why would it be good to use 'add calories' to hide the sugar?

    Just remove sugars completely and track something more useful, or ignore the numbers that come from fruit. When you look at your nutritional info, you might have to use a calculator, but you should be able to take the sugar total and manually subtract off anything from fruit.

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