Sugar per Serving Calculator

How the calculator works

Each line of your recipe is matched to a food in USDA FoodData Central and converted to grams. The calculator then applies the USDA figure for total sugars:

sugars in a line = grams / 100 x sugars per 100 g

sugars per serving = total sugars / servings

It adds up every ingredient that has sugars in it, not only the ones called sugar. Milk, fruit, ketchup and tomato paste all contribute. Open “Show the math” to see each line.

Total sugars, not added sugars

This is the most important thing to know about the result. USDA’s SR Legacy records report total sugars. They do not say how much of that was added.

The FDA draws the line this way. Total sugars include sugars naturally present in many nutritious foods and beverages. Added sugars include sugars that are added during the processing of foods, such as sucrose or dextrose.

In a home recipe you can work out the added part yourself, because you know which lines are sweeteners. In the calculator’s “Show the math” list, the lines for sugar, brown sugar, honey and syrup are your added sugars. The lines for milk, fruit and vegetables are not.

Worked example

A butter cake: 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Twelve pieces.

1. Granulated sugar, 150 g: 149.7 g of sugars
2. Whole milk, 122 g: 6.2 g
3. Flour, 250 g: 0.7 g
4. Eggs, 100 g: 0.4 g
5. Butter, 113.5 g: 0.1 g
6. Baking powder and salt: 0

Total: 157 g of sugars. Per piece: 157 / 12 = 13.1 g.

Of that, 149.7 g is the sugar you added, which is 12.5 g a piece. The other 0.6 g a piece is mostly lactose from the milk.

Against the FDA’s Daily Value of 50 g for added sugars, 12.5 g is 25 percent. The FDA’s guide is that 5 percent or less per serving is a low source of added sugars and 20 percent or more is a high one, so a piece of this cake counts as high.

Sweeteners compared

From the USDA records the calculator uses:

Sweetener	Sugars per 100 g	Per tablespoon	Per cup
Granulated sugar	99.8 g	12.6 g	200 g
Brown sugar	97 g	13.4 g	213 g
Powdered sugar	97.8 g	7.8 g	98 g
Honey	82.1 g	17.2 g	278 g
Maple syrup	60.5 g	12.1 g	191 g

The columns tell different stories. Per 100 g, honey and maple syrup have less sugar than granulated sugar, because they contain water. Per spoon and per cup, honey has the most by a wide margin, because it is dense: a cup of honey weighs 339 g and a cup of sugar 200 g.

Powdered sugar goes the other way. It is light and fluffy, so a cup holds only 98 g of sugars, about half of a cup of granulated.

So swapping a cup of sugar for a cup of honey raises the sugars in a recipe by 39 percent. Swapping by weight lowers them by 18 percent.

Sugars that are already in the food

Some of the total comes from ingredients nobody thinks of as sweet:

• Whole milk: 12.3 g of sugars per cup
• Banana: 18.3 g per cup, sliced
• Raisins: 65 g per 100 g
• Ketchup: 21 g per 100 g

A smoothie with a cup of milk and a cup of sliced banana has about 31 g of sugars before anything is added. None of it is added sugar in the FDA’s sense. That is why the total alone does not tell you much. You need to know which lines it came from.

The FDA figures

• The Daily Value for added sugars is 50 grams per day, based on a 2,000 calorie daily diet.
• The Dietary Guidelines recommend limiting calories from added sugars to less than 10 percent of total calories per day.
• There is no Daily Value for total sugars.

The 50 g and the 10 percent are the same limit stated two ways: 50 g of sugar at 4 calories a gram is 200 calories, which is 10 percent of 2,000.

Why your number may differ

Missing values. A few USDA records have no sugars figure, including canned coconut milk, firm tofu and ground pork. The calculator counts a blank as zero.

Brands. Yogurt, ketchup, peanut butter and canned tomatoes vary between brands, and sweetened versions can be far higher than the plain records used here.

Averages. The USDA figure for a fruit is an average across samples. The banana in your bowl will not match it exactly.

Lines not counted. Syrups, jams and chocolate chips that are not in the food list add nothing to the total. Check the “Not counted” list.

Tips and common mistakes

Measure sticky sweeteners by weight. A level tablespoon of honey is 21 g, and a heaped one, or one that leaves half behind on the spoon, is not.

Do not read “no added sugar” as “no sugar”. Fruit and milk carry their own.

Count glazes, frostings and fillings. They are often written as a separate recipe and left out of the count.

Compare by weight when you swap sweeteners, not by cup.

Divide by real servings. A batch of 24 cookies eaten three at a time has 8 servings, not 24.