Experts advise limiting added sugar to six teaspoons a day to improve health

A new review of the impact of sugar on human health recommends limiting consumption to about six teaspoons a day.

The bad news for those with a sweet tooth is that researchers found significant harmful associations between sugar consumption and 45 outcomes, including asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, some cancers and death.

Sugar-sweetened drinks should be reduced to less than one serving a week, according to the comprehensive evidence review, published by the British Medical Journal on Wednesday.

According to the report it is “widely known that excessive sugar intake can have negative effects on health and this has prompted the World Health Organisation [WHO] and others to suggest reducing consumption of free or added sugars to less than 10 per cent of total daily energy intake”.

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Researchers based in China and the US carried out an “umbrella review” to assess the quality of evidence, potential biases, and validity of all available studies on dietary sugar consumption and health outcomes. Umbrella reviews synthesise previous meta-analyses and provide a high-level summary of research on a particular topic.

The review included 73 meta-analyses (67 of observational studies and six of randomised controlled trials) from 8,601 articles covering 83 health outcomes in adults and children.

Significant harmful associations were found between dietary sugar consumption and 18 outcomes including diabetes, gout and obesity; 10 cardiovascular outcomes including high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke; seven cancer outcomes including breast, prostate and pancreatic cancer; and 10 other outcomes including asthma, tooth decay, depression and death.

Moderate quality evidence suggested that sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was significantly associated with increased body weight for highest versus lowest consumption.

Low-quality evidence indicated that each one serving per week increment of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption was associated with a 4 per cent higher risk of gout and with a 17 per cent higher risk of coronary heart disease and 4 per cent higher risk of and death, respectively.

Low-quality evidence also suggested that every 25g/day increment of fructose intake was associated with a 22 per cent increased risk of pancreatic cancer.

To change sugar consumption patterns, especially for children and adolescents, a combination of widespread public health education and policies worldwide was also urgently needed, they added.