How about 6g or 4g?

The fact is, there is no peer reviewed research proving that eating 5g per day, or 6g or 7g or 9g or 2g for that matter will have any material impact on health.

It’s an arbitrarily chosen number. Just like most thinking around food and diet, these things are highly influenced by current trends.

Obsessing over arbitrarily specific numbers in your diet is missing the point. Just make a conscious effort to consume sugar in moderation and you’ll be fine.

The number is useful because it gives a target. Consume in moderation is a joke because moderation means different things to different people. Of course it's OK to go over or under the 5g number. That's not the point.

If obsessing over specific numbers is missing the point, then so is reporting official-sounding over-precise figures about a "recommended limit".

Sugar is bad for you? Fine. Any given unit of sugar will have worse outcomes than the absence of that sugar? Fair enough.

"Hey, we're reporting 5g as some special, significant threshold that suggests we have actual evidence of things really ramping up at that point that suggests no subjective gain could outweigh the damage to your health, when, in reality, it was just pulled out of thin air"? No. Forget that noise.