ICMR Recommends Zero Added Sugar for Better Health

Sugar

ICMR Recommends Zero Added Sugar for Better Health: The Indian Council of Medical Research announced a few guidelines about how much sugar should you consume daily keeping in mind the risks involved with high sugar consumption.

In its recent guideline, ICMR suggests limiting your sugar consumption to 25 grams per day or either stop consuming sugar completely.

It suggests removing it from your diet as it does not contain any nutritional value but just calories.

The guidelines of ICMR state, “Consumption of sugar in quantities that contribute over 5% of total energy intake per day or 25 g per day (based on average intake of 2000 kcal/day) is defined as high sugar.”

It further states, “Limiting sugar to 25 g per day is better for health. If possible, added sugar may be completely eliminated from one's diet as it adds no nutritive value other than calories."

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Earlier, India’s National Institute of Nutrition which falls under ICMR introduced similar guidelines that say to limit the amount of sugar that is contained in solid foods and drinks.

It guidelines further say that for solid items the extra sugar should be only up to 5% of total energy intake and all sugars should not make up more than 10%. For drinks, the total sugar should not be more than 30 %.

World Health Organization (WHO) also advises to reduce free sugar intake to less than 10% of their total energy daily.

ICMR also says, “Adding sugar over and above what is naturally/inherently present in foods increases the total calorie intake, but adds no nutritive value.”

However, there is a big difference between added sugar and natural sugar, added sugar is sugar and syrups like sucrose, jaggery, honey, glucose, fructose, and dextrose which are made and are added to foods and drinks.

On the other hand, naturally occurring sugars in foods, like monosaccharides in fruits and disaccharides in milk, which are not made up.

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