How much sugar is in what you are eating? The numbers that surprise people

Why does added sugar specifically matter?

Not all sugar is the same. Sugar in whole fruit comes packaged with fibre, water and micronutrients that slow its absorption and bring genuine nutritional benefit. Added sugar is sugar that manufacturers put into food and drinks to make them sweeter. It delivers no useful nutrients beyond calories, which makes it a pure driver of energy surplus.

A comprehensive review published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology in 2022 concluded that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is directly linked to rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease globally. The relationship is not merely associative but increasingly understood as causal, supported by decades of longitudinal evidence and biological mechanism data.

The World Health Organization recommends that added sugars provide no more than ten percent of total daily calories, and that reducing to five percent provides additional health benefit. For someone consuming 2,000 calories a day, this works out to about 25 grams, which is roughly six level teaspoons for the entire day.

How much sugar is in the most common Arabic sweets?

A medium-sized portion of cheese knafeh contains roughly 35 to 50 grams of sugar, depending on how much syrup was used and whether the pastry itself was pre-sweetened. Nut-filled knafeh tends to run higher because nut pastes are often mixed with sugar syrup. A single piece of baklava is typically 15 to 25 grams of sugar, but the problem is its small size: it is easy to eat three or four pieces without feeling full, delivering 50 to 80 grams of sugar in what feels like a light snack.

A serving of om ali, milk pudding or rice with milk contains 20 to 30 grams of sugar per bowl. Maamoul and basbousa sit in the range of 20 to 35 grams depending on the recipe. Levantine halawet el jeben, qatayef fried with syrup and the rolled mubruma range from 30 to 50 grams per portion. These are generous desserts by any nutritional standard.

These numbers do not mean Arabic sweets should be avoided entirely. They are integral to hospitality, celebrations and cultural identity, and removing joy from food is not the point of nutrition education. Knowing the numbers helps you make more conscious decisions: a smaller piece, once or twice a week rather than daily, and not combining a sweet with a sugary drink in the same sitting.

Sweetened tea and coffee: the hidden sugar in your daily cup

Sweetened tea is one of the largest sources of added sugar in many Arabs' daily lives, simply because it is drunk multiple times a day and usually with two to four teaspoons of sugar per cup. Three teaspoons of sugar in a cup equals about 15 to 18 grams. Drink three cups a day and you have exceeded the entire WHO daily recommended limit from tea alone, before any food is considered.

A study of university students in the UAE published in Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome in 2019 found that a substantial proportion had poor awareness of how much added sugar was in their daily drinks, despite knowing conceptually that sugar is harmful. The gap between abstract knowledge and actual intake is wide, and this study underlines that awareness of specific quantities, not just general warnings, is what changes behaviour.

Traditional Arabic coffee with cardamom is typically unsweetened and is genuinely a healthy choice. Coffee with sweetened condensed milk or Turkish coffee with two spoonfuls of sugar adds 10 to 15 grams per cup. Fresh mint lemonade, unsweetened hibiscus and plain water with sliced citrus are all excellent alternatives that can be sweetened with a fraction of the sugar used in tea.

How does added sugar raise the risk of diabetes?

Added sugar does not cause diabetes directly, but it raises the risk through several linked pathways. First, excess calories from sugar promote weight gain, particularly abdominal fat, which is the type most strongly associated with insulin resistance. Second, sugary drinks are absorbed rapidly because they contain no fibre, producing a sharp blood sugar spike followed by a quick fall that stimulates appetite and drives further intake.

A meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Epidemiology in 2020, covering more than one million participants across 20 studies, found that each additional daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with a 13 to 18 percent higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The Arab region already has some of the highest diabetes prevalence in the world, and high added sugar intake is consistently identified as a contributing dietary factor.

A review of sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, published in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal in 2024, showed that consumption remained high despite the introduction of excise taxes, reflecting how deeply embedded these habits are. Individual awareness of specific sugar quantities, the 35 grams in a single can for example, is the starting point for change that policy alone cannot deliver.

Sugar at social occasions: how to handle it without offending anyone

Arabic sweets are not simply food. They are expressions of generosity, celebration and belonging. Visiting a home or a gathering and declining the coffee, the dates and the sweets entirely is socially awkward in most regional settings, and an approach to nutrition that ignores this social reality will not work in practice. This is worth acknowledging honestly rather than pretending the cultural context does not exist.

The practical balance is to treat occasions as occasions and not to replicate occasion-level intake every day. When you are at a celebration or a family gathering, enjoy what you eat without guilt and without calculating grams. On the other days, make the lower-sugar default automatic. One teaspoon of sugar in tea rather than three, water rather than juice with lunch, fresh fruit rather than packaged biscuits in the evening.

A study of soft drink consumption among Arab students published in the Journal of Public Health in 2021 found that daily consumption remained common across both male and female students, with awareness of the risks not translating into behaviour change. The pattern this suggests is that general health messaging about sugar needs to be paired with specific, concrete, alternative choices rather than abstract warnings.

Are sugar substitutes a safe solution?

Artificial sweeteners including aspartame, sucralose and stevia provide sweetness with negligible calories. International food safety authorities including the European Food Safety Authority consider approved sweeteners safe at recommended intake levels. Some studies suggest they may influence gut bacteria composition, but the evidence is not conclusive enough to make them harmful by established standards.

A common mistake is treating a product labelled sugar-free as unlimited. These products may still contain significant fat or other calorie sources. Some people also unconsciously compensate for saved calories by eating more of something else. The practical benefit of sweeteners depends on how they are used in context.

Stevia, which comes from a plant, is widely available in Arab pharmacies and supermarkets. Half a teaspoon of stevia in tea provides sweetness comparable to three teaspoons of sugar, with no sugar at all. Gradually training your palate to accept less sweetness is the most sustainable long-term strategy, because the preference for high sweetness diminishes with consistent lower exposure over four to eight weeks.

Practical steps to cut your daily sugar intake

The single highest-impact change is replacing sweetened drinks with water and unsweetened alternatives. For someone who drinks one to two cans of fizzy drink per day, this change alone removes 35 to 80 grams of added sugar from the daily total, which is more than the entire WHO recommended limit. Sparkling water with a slice of lemon or a few mint leaves is a satisfying substitute for many people.

Reducing the sugar in tea gradually works. Cut half a teaspoon per week rather than suddenly. Most people who try this find that after two to three weeks the lower sweetness becomes normal and they no longer miss the extra sugar. Some reach the point of drinking tea without any sugar added, which would have seemed unthinkable a month earlier.

At the household shopping level, not keeping fizzy drinks and packaged juices as a regular stock item removes them from easy reach in moments of thirst or habit. What is not in the refrigerator cannot be reached automatically. Keeping chilled water and fresh fruit accessible instead makes the lower-sugar choice the path of least resistance, which is the single most effective principle in dietary behaviour change.

For people with diabetes: what is possible and what needs care?

People with diabetes do not have to avoid sweets entirely, but they need to understand what a food does to their blood sugar. Arabic sweets are generally high on the glycaemic index (GI), meaning they raise blood glucose relatively quickly. Eating a small amount as part of a larger meal rather than on an empty stomach moderates this rise. The fat and protein in nut-filled sweets like maamoul or nut baklava slows absorption compared to a plain syrup-soaked sweet.

Measuring blood glucose two hours after eating a portion of a specific sweet is the most accurate way to know its effect on your own body, because individual glucose responses vary substantially. What spikes one person's reading sharply may be more moderate for another, depending on insulin sensitivity, the rest of the meal, physical activity, and timing.

Portion control and meal planning rather than complete restriction is the approach most diabetes dietitians recommend. A small piece of knafeh at a family gathering, factored into the day's carbohydrate total, is a very different situation from eating it daily. Working with a dietitian who understands both diabetes and regional cuisine is the best way to build a plan that is medically sound and socially realistic.

Sources

• Malik VS, Hu FB: The role of sugar-sweetened beverages in the global epidemics of obesity and chronic diseases, Nature reviews. Endocrinology, 2022
• Al-Jawaldeh A, Perucic AM, Hammerich A et al: A review of sugar-sweetened beverages taxation in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, Eastern Mediterranean health journal, 2024
• Alfawaz H, Khan N, Alqahtani S et al: Difference on the prevalence, patterns and awareness of soft drink consumption among male and female Arab students, Journal of public health (Oxford, England), 2021
• Khawaja AH, Qassim S, Hassan NA et al: Added sugar: Nutritional knowledge and consumption pattern of a principal driver of obesity and diabetes among undergraduates in UAE, Diabetes & metabolic syndrome, 2019
• Qin P, Li Q, Zhao Y et al: Sugar and artificially sweetened beverages and risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and all-cause mortality: a dose-response meta-analysis, European journal of epidemiology, 2020
• World Health Organization: Guideline: sugars intake for adults and children