FDA Pushes for Cap on Daily Sugar Consumption

Health experts are nudging Americans to kick their sugar habit. For the first time ever the Food and Drug Administration is recommending a daily cap on the amount of sugar you eat.

Health officials say to limit your added sugar to no more than 10 percent of your daily calories,which is the same amount of sugar found in a can of coke.

That means getting rid of high sugar foods like sodas, cookies, and candies.

However, it also means monitoring your sugar intake on food dubbed as "healthy." Low-fat yogurt, granola, whole-grain breads, and salad dressing are a few of the food items that contain a high amount of sugar.

 "There is a lot of hidden sugar in our food supply, and it's not just in sweets," warned Dr. Frank Hu, a member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard.

According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, nearly half of the added sugar consumed in the United States comes from sweetened drinks.  This includes not only soft drinks, but sweetened tea and coffee, fruit drinks, and sports drinks.

The New York Times reports that under the new guidelines, the amount of added sugars will be added to nutrition labels on packaged foods. The FDA said it wants to distinguish between the amount of naturally occuring sugar and added sugar.

"When you see a yogurt with pictures of blueberries and strawberries on the label — right now there could be a teeny tiny amount of real fruit in there and an awful lot of added sugar, or lots of fruit and dairy and little added sugar, and the consumer cannot distinguish between the two," said Susan Mayne, the director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the FDA.

Manufacturers will have about two years to make the label changes.