Sweet truth... Brown sugar is no better than white - but you can still eat a chocolate bar a day
You and I will each eat an average of 88lb of sugar this year. Add that up and you're looking at 1.75 tonnes over a lifetime - the equivalent weight of a medium-sized car. Still want to finish that chocolate bar?
Worldwide, around 180million tonnes of refined sugar is produced each year and the UK market alone is worth nearly £1billion.
Little wonder that no one listened to eminent nutritionist Professor John Yudkin when he called sugar 'pure, white and deadly' back in 1972 and quite rightly warned of the links between excessive consumption and heart disease.
Just a spoonful: But the amount of sugar we consume can add up to alarming proportions
Expert knowledge: Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George's Hospital in London
And guess what? Skip nearly four decades and researchers now report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that a high sugar intake - particularly of sugary drinks - increases the risk of heart attack by 30 per cent in post-menopausal women. It's a worrying statistic.
From babies we are conditioned to enjoy the taste - the first sugar we come across being lactose in breast milk (lactose is the only sugar that does not cause tooth decay). Sugars are pure, sweet-tasting carbohydrates that provide instant energy (20 calories per 5g teaspoon) and make our diet more palatable. Imagine the taste of a ripe banana if it had no sweetness? Exactly.
Sucrose, made from sugar cane or beet, is often called 'table' sugar. It's found naturally in fruits and some vegetables, such as parsnips, along with glucose and fructose. Malt sugar (maltose) is found in malted drinks and beer, and milk contains lactose.
Sugars naturally present in foods are not something that concern dieticians. What we do worry about is sugar added to foods or drinks which increase calorie consumption and promote tooth decay.
Indeed, recent research has found more than a third of children in England and Wales have decayed teeth or fillings by the age of five.
So how much can we handle?
The Food Standards Agency recommend that no more than ten per cent of our total daily energy intake should come from sugars - that's about 50g to 60g, or ten to 12 teaspoons a day of added sugars for the average adult. This goal allows us to include foods naturally providing sugar, such as fruits, plus some added sugars, say one small chocolate bar, without compromising long-term health.
Yet the 2001 National Diet and Nutrition Survey showed the main sources of added sugars in our diet to be table sugar, fizzy drinks, beer and chocolate for men, and table sugar, fizzy drinks, chocolate and fruit juice for women.
While women slightly exceed the 50g goal, men consume an average 80g a day - 25 per cent above their target. Young men in particular have an average 96g (19 tsp) of sugar each day, mostly from drinks, added sugar and confectionery.
Brown sugar is the same as white
It's a common misconception that brown sugar and honey are healthier alternatives to white sugar. They're not.
Both contain a smidge of essential minerals, but in such tiny amounts as to contribute nothing to our diet. Brown sugar is white sugar with added molasses - a black syrup by-product of sugar refining. Light brown sugar contains about three per cent molasses, dark brown sugar about six per cent.
Fructose - found in table sugar, honey and high fructose corn syrups used as sweeteners in the food industry - is metabolised differently to glucose. It's readily converted into fat, raising blood cholesterol level as well.
The small amounts found naturally in fruits are not a risk, but a fructose intake of more than 50g per day from two or three soft drinks or fruit juice boosts uric acid levels and increases the risk of gout. It can also worsen irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Why will sugar make me fat?
The more sugar-rich soft drinks, such as carbonated drinks, squashes, juices or smoothies, that you consume, the heavier you will be.
Studies have consistently proved the excess calories provided by these drinks are converted into fat. And if you change to drinking more as you get older, as research suggests we do, the more middle-age spread you'll add. This, in turn, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Are sweeteners any better to use?
There have been concerns that sweeteners cause cancer - from Fifties studies linking saccharin with bladder cancer risk, to current concerns regarding aspartame and brain cancer. However, there is no scientific research to prove this.
Scientists have dismissed any safety concerns for humans, and population studies of cancer incidence and the use of sweeteners have also failed to show a link. It is worth opting for sugar-free gum, low-calorie drinks and artificial sweeteners instead of sugar if you care about your teeth or your waistline.
It's totally safe at the levels we regularly consume - and losing weight helps reduce our risk of certain cancers as well.
However, if you suffer from IBS or abdominal bloating you may want to avoid sorbitol (E420), mannitol (E421) and xylitol (E967) which are used in chewing gum and some powdered sweeteners. They can be fermented by our gut bacteria, increasing gas production.
Does sugar cause diabetes?
Diabetes is the inability by the body to control blood sugar (glucose), so it seems rational to think that dietary sugars may cause it.
Sugar intake doesn't affect the risk of developing insulin-dependent diabetes, but its calories contribute to being overweight, which does increase risk of type 2 diabetes, where cells become 'resistant' to the effect of insulin.
Those with diabetes don't need to avoid sugar in their diet, but it's best to have a modest amount with other foods to reduce the speed of sugar uptake and prevent blood sugar levels rising too quickly. Sugary drinks are still best avoided as they cause rapid rises in blood glucose.
Powdered fruit sugar (fructose) is not recommended as blood fructose is slow to clear, and although present in the blood for a long time it doesn't measure on blood glucose meters.
Do children and sugar mix?
Despite popular belief, robust research consistently shows that sugar does not alter children's behaviour - even those with attention deficit and hyperactive disorders.
Interestingly, the same research shows that if parents thought their children had eaten a lot of sugar, when in fact they hadn't, they rated their children as more 'wired' - which goes to show that differences in children's behaviour were all in the parents' minds.
However, there is no doubt that sugar causes tooth decay, as mouth bacteria use sugars to produce acid that erodes tooth enamel and causes decay.
It's not the amount of sugar we eat, but the frequency of eating or drinking that exposes our mouth to sugar throughout the day.
So it's better to eat your sweets all in one go instead of picking at them all day long.
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