Added sugar

Medical consensus holds that added sugars contribute little nutritional value to food,[1] leading to a colloquial description as "empty calories".

[7][8] The most common types of foods containing added sugars are sweetened beverages, including most soft drinks, and also desserts and sweet snacks,[4] which represent 20% of daily calorie consumption,[1] twice the maximum limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

[7][9] Sweetened beverages contain a syrup mixture of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose formed by hydrolytic saccharification of the disaccharide sucrose.

[2][12][13][14] In 2015, the WHO published a new guideline on sugar intake for adults and children as a result of an extensive review of the available scientific evidence by a multidisciplinary group of experts.

EFSA stated: "We underlined there are uncertainties about chronic disease risk for people whose consumption of added and free sugars is below 10% of their total energy intake".