How sweet it was: AHA says limit sugar intake

By Sheilah Downey (sheilahd@foodconsumer.org)

With many Americans losing the battle of the bulge, the American Heart Association is dishing up a fresh batch of guidelines guaranteed to kill your next sugar buzz.

A statement released today from the AHA says that women should consume no more than 100 calories, about 6 teaspoons, of added sugars each day. Men should have no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons.

Those recommended amounts for women are more than the sugar in one 12-ounce can of regular soda, which clocks in at 130 calories and eight teaspoons of sugar.

"Sugar has no nutritional value other than to provide calories," said Dr. Rachel Johnson, associate provost and professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont.

Added sugars, said the statement, are sugars and syrups added to food during processing or preparation. They also include anything you might add to the food at the table.

High intake of added sugars is implicated in the skyrocketing rise of obesity in the United States. Sugar is also to blame for increased risk of high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels and other factors, according to the AHA guidelines.

According to government statistics, most people have been riding on a  sugar overload for the past few years.

The average intake of added sugars for all Americans was 22.2 teaspoons a day, according to a 2001-04 report from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The main culprit, according to the AHA, is that can of sweetened soda.

"Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the number one source of added sugar in Americans' diet," says the statement.

The good news?

A new study in the International Journal of Obesity says that drinking sugar-free drinks is a proven tool to help in the fight against fat.

Researchers analyzed calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat and beverage intake for the study as well as dietary restraint of more than 300 people.

"Our findings suggest that the use of artificially sweetened beverages may be an important weight control strategy among weight loss maintainers," stated a press release.

The study suggested that dieters use more strategies in addition to the sugar substitutes, such as eating less fat, and the use of sugar and fat-modified foods. They were also more likely to reduce caloric beverages and opt instead for artificially sweetened drinks, the study stated.

A 2002 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, on which this research was based, found those who drank sugar substitutes had

"significantly greater weight loss" as compared to those who did not.

While research says the sugar-free drinks are a good method for weight loss, they aren't an instant solution.

"Low-calorie sweeteners and reduced-calorie products are not magic bullets," said Dr. Adam Drewenowski, director of Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. "which means using these products will not result in automatic weight loss."

Drewenowski, who co-authored a recent review of low-cal sweeteners, said that people hoping to lose or maintain weight should use low-calorie sweeteners in addition to other tools.

His study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.