How much sugar is in your everyday drinks?

Most people who cut sugar think about sweets. Mithai, biscuits and dessert are easy to see. The sugar that quietly adds up is the kind you drink: it doesn't fill you up, so it arrives on top of everything else you eat.

The limit: about 25 g a day

The World Health Organization recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of daily energy, and suggests below 5% for further benefit. On a 2,000 kcal day, 5% is about 25 g, or six level teaspoons. India's 2024 dietary guidelines from ICMR-NIN make the same recommendation. Free sugars include sugar, jaggery and honey you add, and the sugar in fruit juice. The sugar inside whole fruit and plain milk doesn't count.

What a normal day adds up to

• A cup of chai with two teaspoons of sugar: about 10 g.
• A glass of nimbu pani with two teaspoons: about 10 g.
• A 250 ml glass of sweet lassi: often 20–25 g.
• A 330 ml can of cola: about 35 g.
• A 250 ml packaged mango or fruit drink: often 30 g or more.
• A glass of 100% fruit juice: 20–25 g, and it counts as free sugar too.

Two cups of chai and one packaged drink is already more than 50 g, twice the 5% limit, without a single sweet.

Cutting it without giving anything up

1. Halve the sugar in chai and coffee, then halve it again after two weeks. Taste adjusts faster than people expect.
2. Read the label per 100 ml. Anything above 5 g per 100 ml is a sweet drink, whatever the pack says about fruit.
3. Eat the fruit instead of drinking the juice. You keep the fibre and the sugar stops counting as free sugar.
4. Make nimbu pani and buttermilk salty, with roasted jeera and black salt.
5. Keep a jug of cold water with lemon or mint in the fridge, so the easy choice is the unsweetened one.

Nobody needs to give up chai. Most of us just need half the spoon.

General information, not medical advice. If you have a health condition, speak to a doctor before changing how you train or eat.