added sugars vs natural sugars

swissfem · December 2021

It looks like all sugars are bad and as a woman you are only showing total sugars, thereby eliminating naturally occurring sugars such as in bananas. So consequently I eat one banana and that’s almost all my sugar for the day. Stupid! It is added sugars that is the culprit. If labels need to show added sugars now, shouldn’t that be a separate category in nutrition? Just saying…

cwolfman13 · December 2021

Sugar is sugar...on a molecular level, it's the same and your body doesn't know the difference. Excessive sugar consumption whether from fruit or added sugar isn't good for you. Sugar in moderation is fine. That said, entries in the database are crowdsourced from other users and many entries are from long before labels in the US required to break out added from naturally occurring sugars...so in many cases, the data isn't even available on older entries.

lemurcat2 · December 2021

swissfem wrote: »

It looks like all sugars are bad and as a woman you are only showing total sugars, thereby eliminating naturally occurring sugars such as in bananas. So consequently I eat one banana and that’s almost all my sugar for the day. Stupid! It is added sugars that is the culprit. If labels need to show added sugars now, shouldn’t that be a separate category in nutrition? Just saying…

Is this intended to be a response to someone?

Anyway, a few points:

(1) If you are using MFP's default, the total sugar number is 45 at lowest (as it is 15% of total cals, and the lowest total cals it will give you is 1200). A 100 g banana should have less than 16 g of sugar, so there is no way that should be near your total sugar for the day.

(2) That said, why worry about MFP's sugar totals IF you mainly eat sugar from whole foods? In that case -- if you are not using it to see if you are eating more sugar than you expected and whether that appears to be added sugar -- I would instead track fat and protein and fiber (to make sure you are getting sufficient) and carbs (to make sure they are where you want them). If those are on point and your cals are onpoint, then you are unlikely to be eating excessive added sugar.

(3) The issue with added sugar is not that it is different in kind from intrinsic sugar -- it is not, all breaks down to the same -- but that if you eat excessive cals from added sugar it is likely to be in high cal lower nutrient foods (often high cal bc of the amount of fat as well as sugar). Thus, if you are eating (1) the right amount of cals, and (2) a nutrient dense diet, sugar is not actually likely to be a concern. If you aren't yet sure what constitutes a nutrient dense diet, you might want to look at the things I mentioned above and maybe count servings of veg and fruit.

(4) As cwolfman alluded to, tracking added sugar through MFP is difficult bc added sugar is new to US labels and there are lots of old entries in the system.

paperpudding · December 2021

as a woman??

not sure why this is a gender issue or was that a typo?

Anyway I don't think all sugars, or any sugars, are bad (unless medical issues)

Portion control and appropriate calories and overall balanced nutrition - yes.

Within that, reasonable consumption of sugars, naturally occuring or added, is fine.

kenyonhaff · December 2021

OK...so first off...sugar isn't bad. MyFitnessPal never indicated that you had to eliminate all sugar from your food consumption. Nor should you. Sugars are a nutrient that we need in our diet.

Unfortunately in English we tend to use the word "sugar" to indicate cane sugar, or perhaps other similar sugars like corn syrup. But "sugar" also chemically means sugars like lactose and fructose that come from foods like milk or a banana. The average healthy person would do well to reduce the amount of "added sugar" (meaning sugar added to food) in their diet, but do not really need to worry about sugar from the banana in their bowl of Cheerios (in fact, do that...fiber, nutrition and volume, yum!).

If you do have issues with sugar (like you are a diabetic) the advice is slightly different. But even then diabetics NEED to have sugars on hand in case of low blood sugar.

Consulting a nutritionist is really the best way to get advice for you, so if you do have access to one I highly suggest checking it out.

added sugars vs natural sugars

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