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Definition of the term "free sugar" as outlined in the UK

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/definition-of-free-sugars-for-the-uk/2A2B3A70999052A15FD157C105B3D745

> The definition of free sugars includes: all added sugars in any form; all sugars naturally present in fruit and vegetable juices, purées and pastes and similar products in which the structure has been broken down; all sugars in drinks (except for dairy-based drinks); and lactose and galactose added as ingredients. The sugars naturally present in milk and dairy products, fresh and most types of processed fruit and vegetables and in cereal grains, nuts and seeds are excluded from the definition.

Haven't we known this for years now?

Yes but now we know... harder.

Well it's good to make sure I guess

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So all sugar then?

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No, actually it’s only

all added sugars in any form; all sugars naturally present in fruit and vegetable juices, purées and pastes and similar products in which the structure has been broken down; all sugars in drinks (except for dairy-based drinks); and lactose and galactose added as ingredients. The sugars naturally present in milk and dairy products, fresh and most types of processed fruit and vegetables and in cereal grains, nuts and seeds are excluded from the definition.

Is it all sugar?

No, not sugar in fresh fruit , processed fruit, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts and seeds.

More like decades.

Ok. I misread that. Thanks

Basically hyperglycemia is really harmful for your health, and a sedentary body less able to maintain tight blood sugar control over time causes significant increases to your risk for cardiovascular disease.

Careful, the sugar lobby, and their political pets, will come for you after posting this.

Get ready for a wall of Narcissistic smirks in suits.

We knew from 1908 to 1936. Over 10000 animal model and 100 human model studies linking 10% sugar 3% salt diet linked to metabolic disorder and dementia.

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yeah, didint get it, too. strange wording there

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“While meta-analyses of observational studies have found that intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is associated with IHD [12,13,14,15], the associations between total dietary free sugars and risk of CVD and CVD subtypes remain unclear [2, 16, 17].”

This doesn’t sound very definitive to me.

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Diet knowledge Lite.

I've seen many people resist reports like this to (wrongly) blame cholesterol and saturated fat.

That's the introduction, talking about previous studies. They did the study to get more evidence and estabilish a more definitive link

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Knowing is half the battle

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> all sugars naturally present in fruit and vegetable juices

It's considered free sugar from the first sentence. It is confusing since orange juice is a juice and also "processed fruit". But in a juice, the sugars are separated from the fibers.

Well hospitals are still overwhelmingly full of people who ignore this, so it doesn’t seem like it.

It’s not people that ignore it so much as people who were never educated about reality. The type of people that believe diet soda, gatorade, and vitamin water are health drinks. Marketing and pushing sugar addiction has really done a number on people.

Please tell me my coffee with milk and honey is ok. It's got them cow squeezing, right?

>The sugars naturally present in milk and dairy products, fresh and most types of processed fruit and vegetables and in cereal grains, nuts and seeds are excluded from the definition.

Dr Atkins wrote about it back in the 1970s.

Fruit juice is just as bad as soda, basically.

It’s free sugar since it lacks the fiber needed to slow the sugar absorption and avoid a big blood sugar rise.

From the posted definition, the milk is fine. Honey is just pure sugar. It isn’t explicitly called out but it is chemically almost identical to white table sugar.

Sugar is free now? Nice

Lets not put diet soda in the same category as gatorade/vitamin water and perpetuate the "diet soda gives you cancer/heart disease/whatever" misinformation. Diet soda is not a "health drink" by any measure despite "health food" already being a vague and meaningless term, but there's no free sugar (or any sugar) in it whereas drinks like gatorade are full of free sugars. This particular study isn't discussing sugar substitutes and their potential effects on long term health.

Happiness causes death, we get it

But if you're not sedentary and just completed vigorous exercise, some electrolytes in the form of a sports drink for example might still make sense..

So always paid for it?

So if I juice fresh fruit is that the same as fruit juice?

Centuries. We've known since the early-middle 1800's at LEAST.

They said HARDER.

Sounds like it. I think the difference is when the fruit is whole, it's bound up in fiber, takes more time to digest, and thus doesn't spike blood sugar as much.

Interesting. I wonder how consuming something like OJ with a food that's high in fiber would change this, if at all?

Oh absolutely. We need some sugars in our diet, and the occasional gatorade is no more "unhealthy" than anything else. People just want to condense everything to "good" or "bad" as if there's no room for nuance when diet and health are so much more complicated than that.

What is "free sugar intake?"

The more you know more, you know?

So, couch potatoes that eat a lot of sweets tend to have more heart attacks. Got it, good to know.

Doubtful. People don’t chew the food that well for that to be a factor. Plus you can drink 10 oranges of straight juice. You’d never eat that many.

I Just did a study; IT FOUND THE SAME THING!!!

*HGNUUUUUUUUUUUH*

Big Sugar still trying to do their damndest to make us blame eggs instead.

My hour long resistance training session at the gym doesn't need gatorade, just some water and a good meal afterward.

That marathoner who is on mile 20 and has hit the wall, pushed through it, pooped himself, and is on the verge of passing out and is only still going due to sheer endorphins? Yep, electrolytes make a LOT of sense.

It's that. Sugar in whole fruit that still has its fiber isn't as bad.

Eat an orange, don't drink orange juice.

Eat grapes, don't drink grape juice.

Eat apples, don't drink apple juice.

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For sure, that's a stretch though. Any time of vigorous cardio or sport where you're sweating a lot.. I prefer mostly water but you're generally going to benefit from some electrolytes including sugars. Obviously best to get as much you can from normal diet

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What’s the difference then between saying “free sugar” and just saying “sugar”

10% sugar intake sounds insanely high though. The question is how much normal sugar intake takes a toll on our bodies.

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Not all sedentary people are couch potatoes. The elderly can't move as well as those younger than them and medical issues can worsen it.

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As best as I can tell, "free sugar" is "more sugar than you would encounter naturally." For instance, fruit juices use way more fruits than you would normally eat in one sitting, whereas just plain old fruit isn't considered "free sugar." It's not incredibly clear to me either, though.

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I would not eat it but it's free and I can't resist

or if you have a job thats mostly spent driving, or an office job, or or etc

There is no dietary need for sugar. Our body DOES need glucose, but you don't need to eat sugar to get it.

Your body can and will make the glucose it needs from non-carbohydrate precursors.

Depression can also promote a sedentary lifestyle. Adding, a healthy diet can also require more effort and work, which might difficult to maintain for both groups.

It’s always confused me the way sugar was treated as a staple for so long.

In descriptions of daily life in the 19th century, you’ll see a provisions list like “flour, canned beans, dried meat, tallow, loaf of sugar…”

When the going was rough, why was it so important for people to have such a useless delicacy as sugar? Even the Donner Party prioritized it if my reading recollection is right.

And fat and dietary cholesterol in general.

I’ve eaten about a dozen eggs a week for 50ish years, and my heart health is fine. Just stick to whole foods, move a lot, and don’t eat trash.

Highly processed foods are the real enemy, but that’s where most of the money is. Food corporations will almost literally crap on a plate and serve it up as a sundae.

Given that this is /r/science, it's worth pointing out that glucose is a sugar.

We get enough sugars to sustain ourselves from natural sugars in the foods we eat and we don't need added sugars or "table sugar" to survive, but the sugars we need are still sugars.

So processed sugar

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It's never a bad thing to remind those amongst us that know, but still live an unhealthy lifestyle. I'm sure I'm one of those people or I wouldn't have scrolled the comments.

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It's a bit more than that. Drinking the juice of an orange would be free sugar, but eating the orange whole would not. I'm not a nutritionists or anything, but my understanding is the foods not counted as free sugar typically have the sugar bound up in a bunch of other stuff, so it takes longer to digest.

Glycemic index of an orange is 40. Glycemic index of orange juice is 66-70. Orange juice will spike your sugar.

Saturated fat intake is also associated with cardiovascular disease. Cholesterol doesn't seem to be that useful of an indication, but high presence of Apo B, a lipoprotein which carries cholesterol, is associated with cardiovascular disease

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Interesting, that doesn’t include sugar alcohols and natural no/low calorie sweeteners. Don’t that have similar insulin reactions though?

You pointed out that we need some sugar in our diet. Your body does not need to consume any sugar to survive. I'm well aware sugar has many forms.

10% sugar is not that much, right? At least not if you include sugars from fruit, vegetables, dairy, etc. I've been tracking and trying to control my food intake for a couple of weeks and consistently get around 10% of my total energy from sugars. And I don't even drink any beveragea that contain sugar, don't add sugar to any food or drinks myself!

There are NO essential carbohydrates. There are essential fats and proteins, including amino acids.

Well, this study is talking about free sugars, not fructose or lactase. So i wouldnt think your numbers are what they are talking about here, your diet sounds great. Free sugars would be added sugars in pre packaged meals or from sodas, or straight white sugar. If i understood it correctly

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Right, I see. Well that does make a big difference indeed. Thanks for clarifying.

Hm. Never would've thought it. But smoking's still good, right?

Oh yeah. If you smoke, a noticeable effect size is basically guaranteed!

I hear it's also bad for your teeth.

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I mean, a couch potato is a derogatory term for a person who takes little exercise and spends a great deal of time watching TV. I’m disabled and largely housebound. I’d be offended if someone chose to insult me by calling me a couch potato as if I chose this life, but I can’t deny that the definition fits.

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Not just sweets. Carbohydrates in particular. Carbohydrates are literally just strings of glucose. Strings of sugar. Eating a potato will literally raise your blood sugar faster than an equal amount of table sugar.

What does “free sugar” intake even mean?

Yea and how many studies do you still see trying to push the notion that dietary fat is the problem without controlling for sugar intake in the recipients diets and using cholesterol as their marker despite the 5 meta studies done in the past 20 years not being able to identify any meaningful association between animal fat and heart disease/early mortality. Nutrition science is such a sketchy field as the vast majority of studies are funded by corporations seeking a certain bias in the outcome to support their product.

How much food though is laced with high fructose corn syrup… it’s in your bread, any snack foods, candy, soda, etc. HFCS is everywhere…. Anyone who has done keto before having to track all the nutrition labels knows how bad and widespread the problem has become.

They clearly say in a purée but fruit juice is considered added sugar as there is no fiber left.

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Despite you being 100% correct, try saying this in most subreddits and the Reddit vegan army will hunt you down.

Sugar that is not bound with fiber or other factors that slows its release. For example fructose in a fruit has a slower release vs the same fruit’s juice.

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I think it's meant to be a "derogatory term" towards those who have the ability to do otherwise, and don't. You're kind of inserting yourself into a situation that doesn't exist/you aren't in.

I mean what was even the point of you saying this?

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We do not need carbs but if you are going to have a healthy diet you will have no other alternative since I do not think popping pills count. But I would love to be proven wrong.

The imporantant point is there should be some room for nuance. When I was young there were litterly no obesy children at my school. Maybe one or two was slightly owerwight in every class. Despite that many ate candies every saturday. Some “free sugar” was not a problem then and does not need to be a problem today.

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I think it also depends on the method of juicing. If you include the pulp (by juicing the whole fruit) you still get the Fibre from the fruit. If you just squeeze the juice out its just sugar water.

What is booty

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Isn't a potato more complex than sugar tho? Taking more time to digest?

This is a correlation study not causation.

Thank you. This study is purely correlation. It’s not causation. Correlation can give a good place to start when looking for cause but they are in no way the same thing.

Unbound sugar. When you eat a fruit, the sugar in that fruit is bound by fiber. It releases slower and thus gradually increases your sugar level, not spike it.

If you drink fruit juice, the sugar has no fibers, so it spikes your sugar level

Glucose is the essential carbohydrate. Your body would not function without glucose.

You'd think so. But the glycemic index is higher for the potato than the pure table sugar; meaning that its broken down into sugar faster

Not where i live, but i can imagine its bad in the states.

I think they feel bad about a situation they don't have control over, and sedentary being equated to couch potato made them want point out that not everyone is choosing the lifestyle that they themselves are forced to live, because many make assumptions, and they wanted to make sure people know that not all people are in the situation by choice. Because people do make assumptions.

This is an understandable response when you feel like you may be judged unfairly based on others' choices, and you have none.

What was your point in phrasing it in a way to make them feel worse?

Office workers are sedentary

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Your body can make all the glucose it requires.

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You really thing big sugar cars about a Reddit post with a few thousand views?

Yep. I’ve always been active. Hell, I have my BS in Exercise Physiology & Biomechanics. However, I’m 54 and have developed a rare form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that keeps me from moving much these days. We have not yet found meds I can take to get me back moving somewhat normally. To the outside person, I probably appear to be a couch potato. I think even to some of the inside people I may appear that way. My wife rides my ass constantly about needing to get up and move but she isn’t the one dealing with the pain and the energy drain that comes from tolerating the pain for 8-12 hours a day while working.

Not just glucose. Most are actually long chain sugars that require some work from the body’s enzymes to break them down to simple sugars.

I feel like alot of people don’t know anything about health.

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If you want to get pedantically technical, we can say that you need to either consume the carbohydrates that will break down specifically into glucose or foods that directly contain glucose itself, but you can't survive with literally 0 glucose.

While we don't need to consume added sugars or already simple glucose, fructose, maltose, or sucrose, we must consume enough carbohydrates that will break down into glucose to support brain function.

Your words specifically were

>There is no dietary need for sugar.

Which is simply untrue, unless your making the argument that we could mainline glucose infused saline or something to avoid eating it, but that's silly.

He wasn't attacking you, don't double down on the spot you were specifically incorrect in.

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No read the last sentence

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Electrolytes? Yes. Sugars? No. You are better off drinking pickle juice than any "electrolyte" drink. Gatorade, PowerAde, etc. are all full of free sugars. On both of my century rides (100 mile rides) I drank electrolytes in water and ate salty foods (ham and cheese). I did not need sugars to complete either of them.

Not all office workers.

I guess it's worth noting that many sports drinks (including Gatorade & Powerade) have non-sugar or very little sugar options (gatorlyte I think?) that just have electrolytes. Completely agree with you though, just saying it's worth distinguishing from soda, for example.

I pointed out that we don't need sugar in our diet to survive. Can you explain what was incorrect about what I said?

I'm not sure if you're intentionally missing the point, but the body does not need a dietary source of glucose to survive. Yes the brain needs glucose, but I'll say it again since it looks like you missed it.

Your body can and will make the glucose it needs from non-carbohydrate precursors.

Yup... probably why I don't really eat carbs beyond low carb veggies like cruciferous vegetables or low carb fruits like avocados.

Sugars (looking at you fructose) results in the production of damaged VLDLs which elicit an inflammatory response on blood vessel walls, causing them to leak. Cholesterol's job is to plug leaks.

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This is the opposite for sweet potatoes though innit?

Would someone be able to tell me if dates very finely blended into a paste would be a radically safer alternative to add in place of normal sugar? Or is that basically just "free sugar" too when you blend it too fine?

You'd be surprised how they micro manage small sparks before they spiral into wild fires.

Watch Cosmos a Space-time Journey season 1. An episode called The Clean Room.

About the guy who discovered the Fossil Fuel Industry gave every child on the face of the earth lead poisoning, and sparked an international crime wave.

The Lengths the Public Relations Firms went to gaslight reality.

Most people don't know this even happened, because they went to such lengths to bury it and to control the Narrative.

Same PR firms work for Big Sugar and Big Tobacco. They have armies of bots and media men on their payroll.

One thing they know is how to shift reality and stop fires before they spread.

I'm sorry you're dealing with that. I have fibromyalgia and ptsd, depression, and anxiety, and they all feed into each other, as I'm sure you're aware, so I personally understand trying treatment after treatment without any real help. Our daughter has hyperthyroidism and rheumatoid arthritis and we have personally witnessed the debilitating effects of it, and what pissed me off the most was her mom (I'm step) actually called her lazy.

I took her to the Dr when she was shuffling like a 70 year old who had also lost tons of weight due to lack of appetite. This happened around covid, so there had been some time in between visits with the kids, and her condition was shocking.

I can't imagine getting on anyone for feeling too bad to move. You're feeling bad enough. Why add to it? My husband never gets on me, and I can't express how appreciative I am of that, but at the same time, I know that's how it should be.

I hope your wife's perspective on your ailment improves and (most of all) that you find a treatment that works for you.

Again, I'm sorry for your condition and the added pressure you must be feeling due to attitudes about it. I've had people call me a liar, one of the kids when they were younger had an attitude that I was just lazy because I just couldn't do anything, you get it.

It really sucks to have an invisible but very real health condition. Especially one that can so wear on you mentally when the physical just won't let up. Many people lack so much understanding on that particular factor in unrelenting pain. Their attitude just stacks something on top of it that you really dont need, and I hope for you that the attitude towards you relents, at the very least.

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Essential means your buddy can’t make it. Your body can directly make glucose from fat or protein.

Why does the article say Free Sugar?! Like, is that Sugar free? Is this article about the effect of sugar or about the effect of sweeteners?

I worry about this so much. I need to cut my intake really badly.

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This is common sense. Stop being stupid.

blending generally breaks down fiber so yes it would cause a greater spike in glucose & insulin than eating it whole. probably still better than regular sugar (different forms of free sugar still have varying glycemic indexes) but likely not a massive difference