According to the2020 to 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, we should aim to consume less than 10% of our total daily calories from added sugars. On a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet, that works out to about 12 teaspoons (about 48 grams) per day. Since the cardiologists at theAmerican Heart Association (AHA)believe added sugars are so impactful on heart health (and overall health) they set even stricter guidelines and suggest that women aim for fewer than 6 teaspoons and men shoot for 9 teaspoons or fewer of added sugar per day.
Now that you know the goal, we have some not so sweet news: The average American consumes about 17 teaspoons of added sugars per day, according toUSDAestimates. This is nearly three times as much as the AHA recommends, and about 50% more than the dietary guidelines' upper limit.
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While you might guess that desserts, candy or sweet cereals might be the main culprits for the excess sugar, the most commonsource of added sugarsin the typical American’s diet is actuallysugar-sweetened beverages. This category includes soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, cocktails and fruit drinks (that aren’t 100% juice), and theCDCreports that these make up about 24% of Americans' collective added sugar consumption.
If you sip on any sweetened beverage, you could inch a lot closer to—or even fall below—that upperadded sugarlimit if you start shifting your consumption to less-sugary beverage options. But one population in particular might want to consider making the switch sooner rather than later.
Read on to learn more about this new research, plus how to make better beverage choices, whether you have prediabetes, have received a type 2 diabetes diagnosis or simply want to live a long, vital life.
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By the end of the long follow-up period, 7,638 participants had died, which meant there was nearly a 50-50 split of those who were still living and those who had passed. This allowed the researchers to look at if there were any patterns among drink consumption in either party.
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If that same person swapped just one serving of a sugar-sweetened drink with a unsweetened beverage, their risk for death dropped significantly, the scientists found.
They also found that swapping in artificially-sweetened drinks, such asdiet soda, did slightly lower overall risk of death compared to sugar-sweetened drinks. That said, the participants lowered their risk even more when they shifted from the artificially-sweetened option to water, tea or coffee.
While we certainly can’t prove that the drink consumption played a large role in the death—this is likely more of a correlation than a causation— “choice of beverage clearly matters,” writesNita G Forouhi, Ph.D., professor and program leader at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine in England in an accompanyingeditorial inThe BMJ. “Although the evidence is less clear for artificially-sweetened beverages and fruit juice, it is reasonable to shift the focus to drinks that are most likely to have positive health impacts: coffee, tea, plain water and low fat milk.”
The Bottom Line
A new study suggests that, over the long-term, switching just one serving per day of a sugar-sweetened drink for a less-sugary option might be enough to lower risk for early death. This research included people who had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a population among whomoverall added sugar consumption mattersa lot.
Still, the same moral of the story holds true for all humans: drinking water (still orsparkling), unsweetened coffee or tea or low-fat milk (or an unsweetenedplant-based alternative) is a savvy move to reduce your overall calorie consumption and added sugar intake—while possibly playing a small role in longevity.
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