Sweet dangers

We all know the dangers of too much salt, fat and calories in our diet, but health professionals warn that not enough of us stop to consider our sugar intake. There are obvious sources of it. But the problem, experts say, is that our everyday diets are packed with "stealth" sugar, sending our intake far above the recommended limits and placing us at risk of a range of diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. We set out to find out how much sugar is lurking in our favourite foods and drinks — including those many would consider healthy. The results were shocking. Guidelines in the United Kingdom recommend that "added" sugars — those used to sweeten food, fizzy drinks, honeys, syrups and fruit juices — shouldn't make up more than 10 per cent of the total energy we get from food. This is about 50g of sugar a day, equivalent to ten cubes of sugar for adults and older children, and nine for 5- to 10-year-olds. But our findings reveal that just one 500ml bottle of Coke will send you over this limit. Even a "healthy" salad contains two cubes. Remember, we're talking about sugar added as a sweetener. The sugars in milk, vegetables and pieces of fruit (as opposed to fruit juice), including dried fruit, do not wreak as much havoc. So if you're getting most of your sugar from these sources, you can eat up to 18 cubes, or 90g, daily. For 5- to 10-year-olds, the figure is 17 cubes, or 85g. The two most common forms of unhealthy added sugars are table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup, a liquid sweetener made from maize. "Added sugars are more likely to do harm as they aren't safely bound in the structure of a food, as they are in fruit," says Sasha Watkins, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association. "It means they are available to the body in higher concentrations." But how can you spot a high-sugar food? To interpret labels that list sugar (which is labelled as "total sugars" and will include natural and added sugar), the British National Health Service Choices website suggests that a food with less than 5g per 100g is classified as low. More than 15g per 100g is high. Excess levels have been linked to increased risk of diabetes. Furthermore, the body turns excess sugar into fat, placing us at risk of liver and heart disease.