Tuesday, March 18, 2008

daily sugar allowance...

Okay, thanks to Donna's link, I was able to determine how much sugar I should have every day. Or rather, how much I can have without going over.

So the USDA recommends that you have no more than 8% of your daily calories be from sugar. So I figure I'm on a 1200 calorie per day diet because I can have 24 points a day and each point is about 50 calories.

Okay, so that would be 96 calories a day from sugar. And one teaspoon of sugar is 16 calories. So that would be 6 teaspoons of calories from sugar a day.

Most foods measure their sugar by grams so I need to find out how many grams are in 6 teaspoons.

6 tsp = 1 oz

1 oz = 28 grams

So, that would be 28 grams of sugar a day for a 1200 calorie per day diet. Right? (Please someone check my math!!!)

Now, I figure I'm on a diet, so my sugar intake would probably need to be less than this. But as long as I don't go over, I should be okay, right?

Boy, I wish a dietitian or doctor was reading this blog so they could weigh in on my theory.

Check this out. Coca-Cola's website says that their 12oz can of Coke Classic contains 30 grams of sugar. They say that it's the same amount of sugar that's in a glass of orange juice. That should be false advertising, you think? I think the sugar in Coke is not quite the same as the sugar from natural oranges.

4 comments:

FluffyDonna said...

Hey, I'm on a 1200 calorie diet too! So if your math is right, you just did all the calculations for me! :) Sweet! Thanks! haha

Christina said...

wow your math looks great good luck on trying to stick to that amount of sugar in a day

Drew Dyck said...

Cara,

You're doing amazing! I can't believe the difference in those pictures.

You're an inspiration to the rest of us!

Drew

Anonymous said...

Your best bet would be to cut all unnecessary sugar from your diet: sugars contained in a banana or a glass of unsweetened orange juice is one thing, sweeteners like sugar and artificial sweeteners will only make it hard for you to lose more weight. Although it seems that you are doing just fine.