In a recent report released by the World Health Organization entitled "Diet Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases," (TRS916) leading health experts are making new recommendations for governments on diet and physical activity to combat rising chronic health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and various cancers.

One of the most controversial recommendations urges people to limit their daily consumption of free sugars to less than 10 per cent of total energy intake. "Free Sugars" are all monosaccharides and disaccharides (including refined sugars from cane, beet and corn) added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices. While consuming less sugar seems easy enough, it's actually a little trickier than you'd think.

Today, a wide variety of sugars with different names are used in the food preparation process. Table sugar and maple syrup are no longer the only sweeteners in our diet.

Beth Mansfield loves to get in a good skate along Ottawa's Rideau

'I don't think...we really know how much sugar we're getting." Beth Mansfield

Canal. But unlike some people out for a traditional bit of Canadiana, she'll pass on the post-skate treat of Beaver Tails, the deep fried, sugary snack.

Mansfield's a speed skater. She's also a nutritionist who says Canadians are eating way too much sugar.

“I don’t think as individuals we really know how much sugar we’re getting at all.”

We come by the desire naturally. In the womb, a fetus will swallow more when the amniotic fluid is sweet.

Our sweet tooth sure isn’t lost on the makers of processed foods - every year they pour more sugars into more products. Statistics Canada has some numbers on how much we eat - about 23 teaspoons of added sugars everyday.

But that only includes refined sugars and honey and maple syrup. Those 23 teaspoons don't include all the other added sugars we get from corn sweeteners - the main ingredient in pop. And, they don't include the sugars in fruit juices.

• RELATED: Canada's new nutrition labels

"Juice can be pretty healthy," Mansfield said. "But it’s kind of like liquid candy in some ways as well, because it’s pretty much pure

TIP: To determine how much sugar is in a serving, check the nutrition label for Sugars (listed in grams). Divide the number of grams by four. For example, in the image below, sugars are listed as 12 g. Divide that by four and you get three teaspoons of sugar per serving.

sugar." While the sugars in pure fruit juices are way better for you because along with sugar comes loads of vitamins and minerals, pure fruit juices are loaded with calories and can be as fattening as pop.

No one is telling us to worry about the natural sugars in fruit. After our all bodies, our brains, wouldn’t function without some sugar.

If we were eating just all fruits and vegetables and getting our sugars just from there we’d be way better off," Mansfield said. "We’d have lower risk of heart disease, cancer, you name it."

Add up all those sugars and some people are eating more than half

New food labels may help decipher sugar content - but they're not mandatory for two years

their body weight in sugars every year. More sugars mean more calories, which means more obesity and more health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

It’s a concern around the world. The WHO’s 10 per cent free sugar recommendation adds up to approximately 12 teaspoons of a sugar a day based on an average 2000-calorie diet – so much less than we eat now that the report provoked loud criticism from the sugar industry and the American government.

Cutting back to12 teaspoons a day is going to be tough. Food labels, which meet Health Canada's new, labeling guidelines, spell out exactly how much of the most common nutrients we’re getting. Carbohydrates will include totals for fibers and sugars. But the labels won't be mandatory for another two years. And, until then, we’ll just have to rely on the list of ingredients to determine how many sugars are in the foods we eat.

We all know some of the guises of sugar:

• sucrose
• fructose
• maple syrup
• molasses

But what about:

• dextrose
• turbinado
• amazake
• sorbitol
• carob powder
• high fructose corn syrup

In order estimate the total number of sugars found in foods several experts use a teaspoon of refined sugar as a metaphor to give us a

Light peanut butter vs regular peanut butter: light has more sugar

sense of how much sugar we’re consuming. For example, because there are 4 grams in every teaspoon of refined sugar a product which contains16 grams of sugars per serving would therefore translate into approximately 4 teaspoons of sugars per serving.

A can of baked, for instance, with the old label, lists just the ingredients.

"I look through the list - white beans, water, molasses, sugar, fructose, brown sugar," Mansfield said. "Lots of sugars in beans. You know what really tastes good with beans is hot dogs…These Top Dogs list pork, chicken, beef, water, salt, dextrose. So there you go, I’ve got sugar down there on the list, so there is some in there.”

And what goes well with hot dogs? A dash of ketchup? Careful - a third of ketchup is sugar. And the bun? Another half-teaspoon of sugar so the yeast can work its magic.

Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition at New York University. But she’s better known for Food Politics, her exposé of the food industry. She applauds the World Health Organization for encouraging us to eat less sugar.

"We’re seeing type-2 diabetes in very young children now. This was never seen before, at least not in the quantity that it is now. Rates have tripled among young children in the last 10 years."

Looking for a health snack? Perhaps a granola bar. Two teaspoons of sugar.

"I’ll look at some of these: Fruit Rollups, Mellon Berry Blast," Beth Mansfield said. "It tells me it’s made with real fruit, it’s low fat.

Well what’s in here? Corn syrup, sugar. Concentrated pear puree, which is basically pear which is sugar. Then sugar, then some oil, the list goes on and on. So here in one of these little rollups, I’ve got 12 grams of carbohydrate which is pretty much all sugar – so we’re looking at 3 teaspoons of sugar in one little Fruit Rollup.”

It’s not just kids who are at risk. Even adults who are trying to lose weight by eating less fat, end up eating more sugar than they may realize. Take light peanut butter. The fat is reduced thanks to higher carbohydrate levels.

Marion Nestle says food manufacturers love sugar so much because it’s so cheap.

"There’s an average of 3,900 calories a day available for every man woman and child - twice what the country needs. Food companies have to make food as cheap as possible so that more people will buy it and they do that by putting in corn sweeteners. The more corn sweeteners you have in a food, the cheaper it is on a per calorie basis.”

Nestle says she was not surprised when the WHO report recommending we eat less sugar prompted a harsh reaction from the sugar lobby in the U.S., and Canada. Randall Kaplan of the Canadian Sugar Institute says there’s no scientific proof sugar is what is making us fat or giving us diabetes.

"There's nothing specific about sugar that you can conclude is causing the problem," Kaplan said. "I could say the same thing to you. Some of it has to be milk, some of it has to be meat, potatoes, you can say that about any food."

Nestle concedes you can't prove scientifically that sugar along is to blame - but she says it is a contributing factor.

"There's plenty of evidence now, for example, that children who consume a lot of sugary foods take in more calories, are fatter and have worse diets than kids who don’t."

Cutting back sugar consumption to 10 per cent of calories would mean a major change in our diet - and the kind of food that we buy.

Can't single out sugar - Randall Kaplan, Canadian Sugar Institute

The World Health Organization is not just telling us to eat less sugar, it’s telling governments to make it happen. Marion Nestle says that’s what the sugar industry is really upset about.

"The World Health Organization is suggesting a ban on the marketing of sugary foods to children, getting sugary foods out of schools, maybe taxing them. They’re considering a whole range of policy options that would reduce sales of these products and that’s what the lobbying groups are concerned about."

Randall Kaplan says adopting those recommendations won't help our obesity problem. And, he says, Statistics Canada is wrong when it says we're eating more sugar than ever. His institute did its own analysis.

"Total sugar consumption, as far as our best estimates, hasn’t changed in about 20 or 30 years."

That's sure not what the government statisticians are telling us. Beth Mansfield says one thing is getting clearer - those new food labels will soon make it easier to keep track of the all the sugars we're eating.

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