The chronic obesity epidemic has been blamed on sugar-laden foods and beverages (and consumption of same certainly has risen), but two major sources of obesity often are marginalized or left out completely: Since 1970, individual physical activity has diminished to a near-catastrophic nadir, while cheap and plentiful food—sugary or no—has stimulated an increase of caloric intake of about 300-500 calories per person, per day. And, at the end of that sedentary day, weight management is always a matter of calories-in/calories-out mathematics. As with most carbohydrate sources, sugar provides 4 kcals per gram, the same as protein (fat is more than double, at 9 kcals per gram).
So, when it comes to exploring sweeteners in food and beverage formulations, a little sense about sugar is needed. Of course, there’s always room for this primary sweetener used in prepared foods and beverages. Whether listed simply as sugar—or as sucrose, refined sugar, cane/beet sugar, table sugar or white sugar—it remains the most common sweetener of foods in Western culture. Yet, sucrose (sugar) has been maligned for decades.