Eating less sugar is a goal for Healthy People 2030, a program by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The program aims to make Americans healthier by the year 2030.
According to a new study, only small changes in our diets are needed to meet this goal. The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Why Is Eating Less Sugar Important?
Eating too much sugar can cause serious health problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
“We wanted to study what kind of reduction in added sugars intake was needed to achieve this Healthy People 2030 target,” said Ellen W. Stowe, Ph.D., MPH, the main researcher.
How Much Sugar Do Americans Eat?
While Americans are eating less sugar than before, many of us still eat too much. In 2013-2016, the average person in the U.S. aged two years and older got 13.5% of their total calories from added sugars.
The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that added sugars should be less than 10% of our diets. However, only about 35% of children and 47% of adults are meeting these recommendations.
How Can We Meet the Healthy People 2030 Goal?
The researchers studied four different ways to reduce sugar intake. They used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to see how much sugar different groups of people were eating.
Depending on the approach, the researchers found that people needed to eat 14 to 57 fewer calories from added sugars per day to meet the Healthy People 2030 goal. Here’s how that breaks down for different groups:
- Approach 1: All Americans would need to eat 13.7 fewer calories from added sugars per day.
- Approach 2: People eating more than 10% of their calories from added sugars would need to eat 22 fewer calories from added sugars per day.
- Approach 3: People eating at least 1.5 times the recommended amount of added sugars would need to eat 56.6 fewer calories from added sugars per day.
- Approach 4: People eating between 10-15% of their calories from added sugars would need to eat 13.9 fewer calories from added sugars per day. People eating more than 15% of their calories from added sugars would need to eat 32.3 fewer calories from added sugars per day.
Conclusion
According to Dr. Stowe, the results from the study are encouraging. She said, “meeting the Healthy People 2030 added sugars target is achievable with modest reductions in added sugar intake.
At most, this represents just less than half of one 12-ounce soft drink. This is important because a major change in diet would not be needed to achieve the target.”
In other words, you don’t need to completely cut out sugar to improve your health. Even small changes, like drinking half a soda less per day, can make a big difference.
If you care about health, please read studies about vegetables that could reduce kidney damage caused by diabetes, and why more than half of people with type 2 diabetes die from heart disease.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about diet that could help reduce high blood pressure, diabetes, and results showing this therapy may reverse diabetes-related eye disease.
The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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