How many grams of added sugar does the World Health Organization recommend as a daily maximum?
Guess before you scroll — the answer is below
The answer
25 grams
The WHO recommends limiting added sugar to about 25 grams — roughly 6 teaspoons — a day for the strongest health benefit, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. A single 12-ounce can of regular Coca-Cola, at 39 grams, already blows past that entire daily allowance on its own.
How to get close to this number
Work back from calories. A guideline diet is two thousand calories, the recommendation caps added sugar at a small percentage of that, and sugar carries four calories per gram. A few percent of two thousand divided by four gives a figure in the low tens of grams.
The teaspoon conversion is what makes it usable: roughly six teaspoons a day. Grams are meaningless at the kitchen counter, and six teaspoons is a quantity you can picture and count. Public health figures survive or fail on whether they can be converted into something a person can see.
The comparison in the explanation is the one that makes the guideline feel impossible: a single can of a standard soft drink exceeds the entire daily allowance. This site's companion question gives that figure directly, and the two together explain why sugar-sweetened drinks are singled out in policy rather than treated as one food among many.
Where this number comes from
| Source | World Health Organization |
|---|---|
| Figure refers to | 2015 |
| Last checked | |
| Unit | grams |
Numbers move. If this one has drifted from its source, let us know.
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