Sugar % Question

For breakfast today I had six oz of yogurt and half a cup of granola--and I've already had 94% of my daily sugar according to the Analysis tab.

Seriously, how much attention do I need to pay to this?  I looked back and I'm getting about 200% of my sugar every day despite staying within my calories, and it's not like I'm eating candy bars or anything, just fruit and whole grain products.  Is this sabotaging my weight loss?

Thier isn't any recomended daily amount of sugar we should have a day; Essentially sugar is a type of carbohydrate that has no nutritional value, so the only way we benefit from eating it is taste, and empty calories. Though that's not to say you shouldn't consume any at all, becuase our bodies aren't that fragile. You can still eat it, knowing what it is and what it does, and a little won't really matter, though I don't know if that small amount would be worth eating in the first place becuase you might not be able to benefit from it's flavor.

I heard that the sugar from fruits is good for you, so generally if you subtract the total amount of sugars from the fruits you eat from the total amount of sugars from your daily analysis, it should accurately give you the amount of bad sugars you consumed, which you can then compare with the amount of sugars you can allot into your daily intake.

Yeah - yogurt and cereal is full of sugar.  I think of it as junk food actually, so I stopped eating cereal altogether, and only eat low sugar or sugarfree yogurt (usually I just have cottage cheese instead). 

Sugar is in SO many things you wouldn't think of (even whole grain bread).  Basically, any '-ose' you see in the ingredient label is sugar.  Don't worry so much about the sugars from fruit, but you can definitely limit what you consume when choosing processed/prepackaged foods.

Sugar has nutritional value, too much is bad, leads to diabeties and such. But it's still used by your body, glucose is the primary source of energy in the body, everything gets converted to glucose to be used as energy.

And it's used by every living thing, so it's impossible to avoid. Anyway, it should hinder your weight loss, and sugars from fruits definitly aren't bad for you. If you're at risk for diabetes you might want to cut back, but if not, I wouldn't worry about it too much. 

double post, sorry

Watch out, biochem major coming through!

While I agree with most of the stuff said up there I do feel the need to point out that not all '-ose' adding ingrediants are sugar. Most are but that suffix actually is used for the types of carbohydrates that are soluble in water. Sugar just happens to be one type of soluble carb and hence has an '-ose' name :)

Yeah I hesitated after writing that because I knew someone would point that out.  I probably should have been more specific... here is a list of things you can avoid on food labels and some explanations.  The full article is here


Rid Your Kitchen of Refined Sugar
Go through your refrigerator and cabinets, reading labels. If you find anything with these words on it, throw it out immediately: sucrose, fructose (obviously the commercially refined kind), glucose, maltose, lactose, galactose, cane syrup, corn syrup, corn sugar, invert sugar, dextrose, or anything else that smacks of refined sugar.

Sucrose
More commonly known as white, refined table sugar, it comes from sugar cane, sugar beets, and sugar maples, and is the most widely used form of sugar. The following is a list of products in the sucrose family:4 White sugar 99.9 percent sucrose Turbinado sugar 99 percent sucrose Brown sugar 96 percent sucrose Maple sugar 95-98 percent sucrose Maple syrup 65 percent sucrose Molasses
50-70 percent sucrose

Fructose
Also known as levulose, fructose is found naturally in fruits and honey. It can also be commercially refined from corn, sugar beets, and sugar cane. Currently, the most popular form of refined fructose is corn syrup, which is added to hundreds of products. Since it is about 70 percent sweeter than sucrose,5 many food manufacturers now use refined fructose to replace refined sucrose in their products ? same sweetness, fewer calories.

Maltose
This form of sugar results from "malting" certain grains together with natural enzymes. Two of the most popular forms are barley malt and brown rice syrup. Barley malt is made by sprouting barley, drying it, then mixing it with water and cooking it into a syrup. Brown rice syrup is made by adding dried sprouted barley to cooked rice. After the rice is cultured, it is strained and cooked to produce a syrup. Maltose is about one-third as sweet as sucrose.6

Glucose
Also known as dextrose, glucose is found naturally in fruit, honey, carob, and corn, or may also be found in refined form. It is about two-thirds as sweet as sucrose.7 Glucose is also the form that all sugars are broken down to by our bodies to be utilized for energy. (Special note: Lactose is the form of sugar found in milk. Another form of milk sugar is called galactose. These are not consumed in sugar form, but as part of milk products. Therefore, they are not usually considered food additives.)

Which Sugars Are Better For Us?
As far as nutritional benefit to our bodies, all simple sugars are empty calories ? about four per gram. As regards their impact upon our bodies, sucrose is the worst. It demands the production of insulin by our pancreas, causes significant fluctuation in blood-sugar levels, and robs nutrients from various stores in our bodies in order to be digested. The myth of "quick energy" that accompanies refined sugar products such as candy bars and other sweets that are high in sucrose (white sugar) is destroyed by the reality that a temporary "sugar high" from this form of sugar is followed quickly by the "sugar blues."

Thank you so much everybody!  That really helps.  I won't be stressing as much now.  :)