Perhaps Americans paid attention to the roll-out of the updated Dietary Guidelines, which for the first time recommend a limit on consumption of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-January “finds that 58 percent [of respondents] say they tried to limit sugar in their diets in the previous 30 days,” says Reuters. “That is higher than the percentage of those who are targeting reductions in their intake of calories, sodium, fats, cholesterol or carbohydrates.”
Reuters says there are indications, such as Internet searches, of rising interest in controlling sugar consumption. “Searches for ‘is sugar bad’ were significantly more popular than the same searches for cholesterol, sodium, and saturated fat,” says Reuters. The Sugar Association, a trade group for growers and processors, says the culprit behind U.S. obesity is higher consumption of calories other than sugar.