RDI of sugar?

Cliszew
Cliszew Posts: 5
in Food and Nutrition
What is the deal is with the RDI of sugar. MFP has made it easy for me to track things that I have never tracked before and most things are good except I am routinely 3X over my goal on sugar. For example today I ate 159g of sugar while MFP thinks I should be eating 50g per day. From what I have learned there Isn't necessarily an RDI for sugar but most suggestions are 40-50g per day. I am somewhat baffled at how this is possible? I drank 16 oz. of apple juice, that was 56g of sugar. Another 65g in the fruit I ate today. Most of the rest was in the coffee or the yogurt I ate this morning. Fruit and juice and yogurt don't seem like bad choices to me.

Replies

  • laus_8882
    laus_8882 Posts: 217 Member
    I wouldn't drink juice often, mostly because it doesn't do anything to blunt my appetite. If I'm going to drink a bunch of calories with no satiety to show for it, then damnit, I want a doctor pepper or strawberry fanta. Yum!

    Sugar is just sugar really. Won't kill you, probably won't do much good either. If you can spare the calories why not enjoy a glass of juice and some yoghurt? I got sick of always being over (but I like to monitor my sugar) so I just upped my sugar allowance. Too easy.

    Just wanted to add - juice is like the black death for your tooth enamel. Use a straw when you drink juice!
  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,423 Member
    You'll get different answers on this question - my opinion is that if my sugar is coming from fruit and veggies and no-added-sguar dairy then I can live with that.

    MFP is a great tool for analysing the food choices that you make and sometimes you get surprises:
    - Juice may sound like a good choice - but it's really not. It's basically taking the sugar from the fruit and throwing away the fibre and other goodies. You would be much better off drinking water and eating apples rather than drinking juice.
    - If your yoghurt has sugar added - then it's probably not a great choice either. Buy natural yoghurt and add your own fruit with a bit of sugar or honey if you want it sweeter. This way your can control how much sweetener is added.
    - Coffee is great stuff, but adding lots of fake flavour and sweeteners can turn it into something much more like candy than coffee. Try cutting down the amount of sweetener that you use and use plain milk (skim if you are concerned about the calories).
    - Keep up the fruit intake but add veggies too. Aussie guidelines suggest 2 fruit + 5 veg each day which sounds like a good balance to me.
  • Cliszew
    Cliszew Posts: 5

    You would be much better off drinking water and eating apples rather than drinking juice.

    I was thinking that while I was drinking the juice earlier. I would rather be eating an apple because the juice doesn't even taste as good as a real apple.
  • bathsheba_c
    bathsheba_c Posts: 1,873 Member
    I've heard multiple people say that the problem is that MFP sets the sugar limit at the RDI for added sugar, but then counts all sugars, including naturally occurring ones from dairy and fruit.
  • clrrrr
    clrrrr Posts: 261 Member
    I struggle with this, too--getting way over my sugar recommendation on fruit and dairy alone. I've kind of half-accepted it, but I am more honest with myself about it being a choice nowadays. I used to think of it as "fruit is good for you, you need it to get all its healthful benefits," but then someone on one of these boards pointed out that you can get all of the nutrition you'd be getting from fruit from vegetables instead; there is nothing inherently valuable about fruits in the grand scheme of all produce. BUT they are delicious! My project lately is to try to restrict myself to a majority of fruit intake coming from apples and berries, but that's pretty hard on days like today, when my dad brought home an 80-gallon drum of grapes (my absolute favorite fruit, and one of the worst, in terms of the ratio of sugar to nutritive value) from costco. But it could be SO much worse! At least it's a whole food.
  • Cliszew
    Cliszew Posts: 5
    I've heard multiple people say that the problem is that MFP sets the sugar limit at the RDI for added sugar, but then counts all sugars, including naturally occurring ones from dairy and fruit.

    any credible proof that this may be the case?

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