Added sugar bad for heart: study

BEIJING, April 21 (Xinhuanet) -- A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that eating a lot of sugar may increase a person's risk for developing heart disease, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

"Just like eating a high-fat diet can increase your levels of triglycerides and high cholesterol, eating sugar can also affect those same lipids," Dr. Miriam Vos of Emory School of Medicine, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The researchers asked 6,000 adults what they ate and then grouped them by sugar intake and cholesterol levels.

On average, nearly 16 percent of people's daily calories came from added sugar.

The highest-consuming group ate an average of 46 teaspoons of added sugar per day, while the lowest-consuming group ate an average of only about 3 teaspoons daily.

"It would be important for long-term health for people to start looking at how much added sugar they're getting and finding ways to reduce that," Vos said.

Too much sugar not only contributes to obesity, but also is a key culprit in diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.