Which countries consume the most added sugar?
A recent WHO report linking the consumption of processed meats and red meat to an increased risk of colorectal cancer has people around the world re-evaluating their diets. Now comes news that sugar might be much worse for us than originally thought.
A study led by Dr. Robert Lustig from the department of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco found that replacing all food containing added sugar with starchy processed food such as potato chips in the diets of 43 children led to improved cholesterol and lipid levels, as well as a drop in insulin levels. In an interview with Time, Dr. Lustig claims that his study provides “hard and fast data that sugar is toxic irrespective of its calories and irrespective of weight.”
So which countries consume the most sugar? Buzzfeed analysed information from the United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service and combined it with population data from the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook and came up with the below list.
Sugar consumption per capita/day. The World Health Organization recommends that adults should keep their intake of sugar to no more than 25 grams (6 teaspoons) daily.
#1 Brazil: 152g
#2 Russia: 108g
#3 Mexico: 104g
#4 European Union: 100g
#5 Egypt: 94g
#6 United States: 90g
#7 Pakistan 62g
#8 Indonesia: 62g
#9 India: 58g
#10 China: 33g
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