Imho 17 teaspoons of sugar per day is a slow self inflicted death sentence

Life is a slow (or not so slow, as the case may be) death sentence.

I don't quite get what is the deal with sugar. Those 17 teaspoon are around 50-100g, making around 10-20% of an adults daily caloric intake. That doesn't sound too crazy. Can't you just eat less starchy stuff, after all, that gets broken down to sugar anyway. Or is it that food gets so tasty that people generally eat too much?

I know the statistics point to sugar as being evil incarnate, but I feel there's more wrong with the American cuisine and now sugar gets the blame for all of it.

Personally I eat around 5 teaspoons of sugar a day, mostly in the form of marmalade and ketchup and don't seam to have any adverse effects. Also I guess you'd have to drink sweetened beverages to get to 17 teaspoons, cause at 10 teaspoons a day all my food would be unbearably sweet.

It‘s not “American cuisine”, it‘s overly processed foods. Which exist everywhere. In fact quite a large amount of countries in Western Europe fall squarely 2x over the WHO’s 2015 recommendations at over 100g per day.

I do agree that sugar is taking the blame for the companies selling us these sugary treats. I mean its literally JUST yummy carbs, it’s not like its a carcinogen. And the average person has been so completely numbed by a life of excess sugar that it makes the already predatory food companies push even more sugar in to compete.

It was remarkable to me when I switched to unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter that after about 5 days of it tasting bland, it started tasting amazing.

Since then I've been cutting the sugar in every recipe down to 1/3 to 1/4 of what's specified. You just plain don't need it: at least provided you've largely dropped sugar out of your regular diet (so very limited off the shelf food - which now tastes incredibly sweet to me these days).

The lack of fiber in foods is what makes sugar problematic for a lot of people. Highly processed food gets rid of a lot of that fiber.

Tomato is a fruit. Most fruits have quite a bit of sugar in them. So no, it isn't surprising that tomato soup has sugar in it.

While tomatoes are fruits and some tomato varieties can be quite sweet, a "normal" red tomato is about 5% carbs, 1/3rd of which is fibers.

If your tomato soup is above 10% sugar, a significant amount of sugar was added.

For the wheat thins GP mentions, literally all 4g of sugar are added sugars, per packaging: "total sugars 4g, includes 4g added sugars".

Here is the list of ingredients from the amazon listing:

- wheat flour

- canola oil

- sugar

- cornstarch

- malt syrup

- refiner's syrup

- salt

- leavening

- tomato powder

- sundried tomato powder

- paprika

- garlic powder

- spices

- onion powder

- dried bell peppers

- yeast extract

- natural flavours

- sulfur dioxyde

"Sugar" is literally the third largest ingredient, followed by two syrups at 5 and 6.

That's misleading because most (95%) of a tomato are water. The non-water parts of a tomatoe are 80% sugar, the rest fiber.

> That's misleading because most (95%) of a tomato are water.

So is the vast majority of a tomato soup.

You can literally look at the ingredients list of your can of campbell's or whatever and see sugar as one of the top ingredients.

> You are not their target market.

I’m actually not sure about that.

I feel like there is a significant demographic who (for example) drinks coca cola as a “pick me up” (aka energy boost/mood regulation if they’re addicted).

In my own case, I’m much more likely to get on the sugar train if I have not slept properly and I’m trying to claw my way through the day.