Daily Sugar Intake Calculator

This is a maximum to stay under, not a target to hit. Added sugars — the sugars put into foods and drinks, plus those in syrups and fruit juice — provide calories with little nutritional value, and high intakes are linked to weight gain, dental problems, and heart-health risk.

The number shown is the American Heart Association's daily limit for your sex: roughly 25 g (about 6 teaspoons) for women and 36 g (about 9 teaspoons) for men. To put that in context, a single regular soft drink can contain more added sugar than a whole day's limit.

Importantly, this refers to added and free sugars only. The naturally occurring sugars in whole fruit, vegetables, and plain milk come packaged with fiber, water, and nutrients and aren't the concern — you don't need to count those here.

Values. We show the American Heart Association's daily added-sugar limits: about 25 g/day for women and 36 g/day for men.

The WHO alternative. The World Health Organization frames the same idea as a share of energy: keep free sugars under 10% of your total daily calories, and ideally under 5%. Both are accepted ways to express "less added sugar"; we lead with the simpler gram limits.

Confidence. We label this moderate confidence: these are public-health guidelines, not a personalised figure, and the gram-limit and percentage-of-energy approaches can give slightly different numbers depending on how much you eat.