Q. We don’t buy much sugar these days, so where is all the sugar coming from?

Q. We don’t buy much sugar these days, so where is all the sugar coming from?

A. Only about 25 per cent of the total sugar we consume comes from what we add to tea or coffee or used to bake muffins and desserts.

Most of the sugar we eat - around 75 per cent of the total – comes from everyday foods like biscuits, cakes, ice creams, fruit juice drinks and breakfast cereals, as well as the more obvious soft drinks, cordials, jams, chocolates and lollies. Of these, soft drinks and juice are the biggest, accounting for around 50 per cent of all the sugar we eat.

This is a dramatic reversal of the situation early in the 20th century. Up until the 1950s, most sugar was used at home to prepare jams, home-made cakes, bottled fruit and puddings as well as to sweeten tea and coffee. Despite this, our total intake has changed relatively little. It’s still a huge 50 kg (100 pounds) a year!

How much sugar fits into a healthy way of eating? How much is in a bottle of sports drink? Or a doughnut? How can you tell from the label what's high and what's low? 

Our  Fact Sheet on Sugar  gives you all the answers in a short punchy two-page format. No long boring pages to read.  Just the facts with colour pictures.