Drinking just one sugar-sweetened drink every day increases your chances of developing heart disease, researchers say. Those who get a quarter or more of their daily calories from refined sugar triple their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Refined sugar should make up less than 10 per cent of total calorie intake, which equates to around 70g for men and 50g for women, the World Health Organisation (WHO) advises.
Food that is high in added sugar, such as cakes, biscuits, chocolate and fizzy drinks, contains more than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g, while food low in sugar has less than 5g per 100g.
Researchers from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered a significant link between the amount of sugar consumed and heart risk when they analysed the diets of tens of thousands of Americans.People eating too much sugar put on weight and even become obese, which, in turn, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
(Source: JAMA Internal Medicine, February 3, 2014; doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13563)
