Daily Junction.mobi portalHealth · December 23, 2024 · Dr. Nadia Okoro · 5 min
Cutting back on sugar is one of the simplest ways to improve your diet, but it is easy to get wrong. Here is which sugars to focus on, where hidden sugar lurks, and practical, realistic ways to eat less of it.
Most of us eat more sugar than we realise, and more than is good for us. Cutting back is one of the simplest, highest-impact changes you can make to your diet — but the advice is often muddled, leaving people anxiously avoiding fruit while overlooking the genuine culprits. Getting clear on which sugars actually matter, and where they hide, makes cutting down far easier. This is general information rather than medical advice; if you have diabetes or another condition affecting your diet, follow the guidance of your healthcare team or the NHS.
The first thing to understand is that not all sugar is equal in the eyes of health guidance. The target is a specific category called free sugars.
Free sugars are those added to food and drink — by manufacturers, in cooking or at the table — plus the sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, and unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices. These are the sugars that bodies like the NHS and WHO recommend cutting back on, because we tend to consume them in large amounts and they add calories with little nutritional benefit.
Just as important is what is not the target: the sugars naturally found in whole fruit, vegetables and plain milk. In whole fruit, for example, sugar comes bundled with fibre, water and nutrients, and is digested more slowly. You do not need to avoid whole fruit or vegetables because they contain sugar — that is a common and counterproductive misunderstanding. The concern is added and free sugars, not the natural sugar in whole foods.
The simplest mental rule: cut back on sugar that has been added, and on sugary drinks. You do not need to fear the sugar in an apple.
Reducing free sugars brings several benefits. They are a major source of "empty" calories, so cutting them can help with maintaining a healthy weight. They are also strongly linked to tooth decay, one of the most common preventable health problems. And because sugary foods and drinks cause sharp rises in blood sugar, reducing them supports steadier energy and lowers the dietary contribution to type 2 diabetes risk over time.
None of this requires cutting sugar to zero. The aim is to bring high intakes down to more sensible levels — and for most people, that means tackling a few big sources rather than agonising over every gram.
For many people, the largest source of free sugars is what they drink. Fizzy drinks, energy drinks, sweetened coffees, squashes and even some "healthy" smoothies and juices can contain striking amounts of sugar — and because liquids do not fill us up the way food does, it is easy to consume a lot without noticing.
This makes drinks the easiest high-impact change:
Cutting sugary drinks alone removes a large slice of many people's free-sugar intake with minimal effort.
Beyond the obvious sweets and desserts, a great deal of sugar is added to products you might not suspect — including savoury and "healthy-looking" ones:
The only reliable way to know is to check the label. Look at the "of which sugars" figure in the nutrition information, and scan the ingredients — sugar appears under many names (glucose syrup, dextrose, fructose, maltose, molasses and others), and ingredients are listed in order of quantity. A useful rough guide many people use is that more than about 22.5g of total sugar per 100g is high, while 5g or less is low. Comparing similar products and choosing the lower-sugar option quickly adds up.
Sustainable change beats crash effort. A few realistic tactics:
It is also fine to keep room for occasional treats. An all-or-nothing approach often backfires; the goal is a lower baseline, not perfection.
Reducing your sugar intake is one of the simplest ways to improve your diet, as long as you target the right sugars. The ones to cut are free sugars — those added to food and drink, plus honey, syrups and juice — not the natural sugar in whole fruit, vegetables and milk. Sugary drinks are usually the biggest and easiest win, while labels reveal the sugar hidden in savoury and "healthy-looking" products. Go gradually, swap rather than simply remove, cook more from scratch, and treat it as a lasting habit rather than a crash diet.
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