How much sugar should we be eating? What experts say in 2025

Jenna decided to do a reset and cut out sugar from her diet. It was far from easy. This is what experts say about how much we should be eating and whether quitting it is a good idea.

Jenna Sexton felt great on the first day she cut out added sugar and processed foods from her diet.

She made the decision to go cold turkey while studying at college in the US, adopting a diet program that involved cutting out all added sugar, along with alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy, pasta, chips or fries

Jenna said she wanted a “reset”.

Twenty-four hours into the challenge, she was thriving.

“Day one was easy because of the false sense of optimism that made me determined to try,” she said.

“I thought, ‘oh, this is easy!’”

Jenna Sexton quit sugar for her health – but at two weeks she felt awful.

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But by the end of two weeks without sugar or processed foods, her optimism was out the window.

“I was plagued with constant headaches, gut issues, lethargy, cravings, and intense brain fog,” she said.

“I was tempted to give up, but the online support forums said by the middle of week three, you feel like a new person. So I persisted!”

However Jenna said after three weeks, she hit a turning point.

“I was shocked at how amazing I felt,” Jenna said.

“I had so much energy, regulated moods, my sleep improved, my cravings were gone, and I didn’t want any soft drink or sugary things. I craved nutritious foods and water.

“It was honestly the best I have ever felt.”

Jenna has since returned to eating added sugar again, saying she believed in “balanced nutrition” – but said the challenge had taught her the importance of listening to her body.

“My experience gave me perspective on how important it is to be in tune with my body,” Jenna said.

“I now pay attention to my ‘gut-brain axis’ which influences my mental and emotional health. Happy gut, happy life!”

Jenna’s example is more extreme because she cut out extra foods than just the sweet stuff, something that isn’t recommended because it could deprive you of important nutrients and a balanced diet.

But how much should we actually be eating and when should we look at cutting down on sugar?

How much free sugar should we be eating?

It’s recommended that ‘free’ sugar (which includes that added to processed foods and things like juice and honey) be limited to 10 per cent or less of our daily energy intake.

According to a major survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, released in September, we are on average under that guideline, sitting at about 8.2 per cent.

But how can you tell if you’re having too much?

To make it easier to understand, the World Health Organisation says 10 per cent equates to roughly 12 teaspoons (or 50g). The ABS survey (carried out in 2023) says Aussies are, on average, just under this at 43.4g of free sugar.

Aussies should limit their free sugar to less than six teaspoons to be their healthiest.

That’s down from 15 years ago when we were consuming an average of 59.7g of free sugar.

But if you want to be your healthiest then WHO advises that six teaspoons (or 25g) should be the goal.

The nutrition information panel gives a guide as to how much sugar there is in every 100g or the serving of food you’re eating.

But it doesn’t differentiate between added sugar and sugar contained naturally in the food.

So it helps to look at the ingredient list for words like glucose, dextrose, maltose, golden syrup, maple syrup, molasses, coconut sugar and agave syrup.

“Some sugar is actually perfectly fine for us,” nutrition scientist Tim Crowe said.

“Those are sugars naturally found in food.

“If you’re talking about lactose, that’s naturally found in milk and milk is perfectly fine to be having.

“Same with if you eat fruit, you’re having fructose.

“The thing most likely added to foods in Australia is sucrose (which is different to America where things are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup).

“It’s not so much lactose and fructose and sucrose are bad for you, it is if it is added to food for the sweetness.”

Is it worth quitting sugar and will you get headaches?

Although some people, like Jenna, see benefits from cutting out all ‘free sugars’ and doing a reset, Dr Crowe said you didn’t have to go that far to become healthier.

“For some, quitting can be a good thing, so it’s making a drastic change to get yourself motivated and then you can slowly reintroduce some foods from there,” he said.

“For others just having less of it to start with is a really good thing, it can help you with reading labels and being aware of where sugar is hidden.”

Accredited practising dietitian Annabel Mackenzie said the body needed sugar as a source of energy.

“We don’t want to dismiss the sugars that come from fruit, for example, because fruit will still contain fibre, vitamins, minerals, and all other sorts of nutritional benefits that our body actually needs,” she said.

“So, to deny those sugars would be silly.

“Your body naturally needs sugar because glucose, the simple simplest form of sugar, is what drives our body. It gives us energy. It’s our petrol.”

She said a better approach, rather than cutting it out, would be to just limit processed foods.

“If you were around in the 1960s and 70s, remember how we used to eat?

“There were few processed products. Everything was fresh. Everything was unpackaged.

“We had to make meals from fresh ingredients and start from scratch.”

Eating plenty of unprocessed foods like fruit and vegetables is the best way to go.

And what about the withdrawals and headaches from cutting it out?

A 2017 article which outlined how rats chose sugar over cocaine sparked division and debate within the scientific community about whether it was addictive.

Hayley O’Neill, assistant professor in biomedical science at Bond University, said having a sore head or brain fog from cutting back on, or quitting, sugar was common.

She said sugar activated the reward pathways in the brain which increased the dopamine response, so it would take time to adjust.

Dr O’Neill said another possible reason would be your body going into ketosis, because it was switching from burning carbohydrates or sugars to burning fat.

“When you go into burning more ketones, headaches and fatigue are quite common outcomes as your body transitions,” she said.

Another potential cause was because the electrolyte balance in the body had been disrupted from the diet change, she added.

If you cut back on sugar, be careful of swapping to something equally unhealthy

Accredited practising dietitian Alan Barclay warns that many people who try cutting back on sugar can fall into the trap of replacing it with ‘low sugar’ substitutes or refined carbs that he didn’t believe were healthier.

“People, when they just quit sugar don’t usually just cut out everything,” he said.

“They usually switch to an alternative, that’s the way most people eat, I can tell you with 32 years of clinical experience in clinical dietetics, people don’t just stop eating foods.

“Usually the alternatives they switch to are a low-sugar variant and usually they have got a low-sugar claim or something like that.”

Dr Barclay, (who is a health and nutrition adviser for Australia’s industry body for retail and fast food) said often these low-sugar foods had an intense sweetener put in such as aspartame, sucralose or stevia.

He said the food would also need to be bulked out with maltodextrins or starches.

For stevia, it would include erythritol for bulking. It is a sugar alcohol that needs more research but has been linked to heart disease.

“Sweeteners have a number of roles in the food, one of them is a bulking agent and it gives it texture as well as the sweetness,” he said.

“So you have to replace the texture in a solid food, usually with starch or maltodextrin, which comes from rice bran syrup and the like.

“Starches and maltodextrins aren’t labelled in the nutrition information panel, but you can find them in the ingredient list.”

Dr Barclay, who co-authored a controversial 2011 research paper that challenged the idea sugar was a main contributor to the obesity epidemic, said this was a problem with the ‘I Quit Sugar’ movement that became popular in the early-to-mid 2010s.

He also said many people also didn’t understand that refined carbohydrates – like cheap white bread or rice crackers – converted to glucose in the mouth.

White bread turns into glucose in your mouth.

Dr Barclay, a spokesman for the Dietitians Association of Australia, said these type of foods became sticky in your teeth.

“If the food is retained in the mouth, think of a soft white bread that might stick in between the teeth, those are the sorts of things being converted into glucose by an enzyme in your saliva and also by the bacteria in your mouth and they will contribute to tooth decay,” he said.

Why fruit isn’t bad but fruit juice is

While whole fruit itself isn’t something you need to worry about eating, drinking juices made from it are a completely different story.

Dr Crowe said “drinkable” sugar was something to avoid.

“You don’t normally eat five apples or oranges in one sitting but you can drink that juice in 20 seconds,” he said.

The oranges themselves are fine to eat, but it is best to steer clear of it as juice.

“So that’s why, if we look at the research, people who have lots of whole fruit in their diet, not only control the weight, but they may have the small benefit of losing the weight.

“But if you’re getting it from juice, then the weight kicks in.”

Ms Mackenzie said that too much fructose could lead to fatty liver, insulin resistance, higher blood pressure and increased appetite.

Originally published as How much sugar should we be eating? What experts say in 2025