How to cut down on sugar: a 4-week plan

How much sugar is too much?

Different agencies count sugar differently, which is why the numbers you see online don't match.

Free sugars (WHO, NHS) are sugars added by manufacturers, cooks or you, plus sugars naturally found in honey, syrups and fruit juice. Sugar inside whole fruit and milk doesn't count. Added sugars (US FDA and Dietary Guidelines) are a close cousin: sugars added during processing, including sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices, but not the sugars naturally found in milk, fruit and vegetables.

The 25 g figure is simple arithmetic: 5% of 2,000 kcal is 100 kcal, and a gram of sugar has 4 kcal. The WHO rates its 10% limit as a "strong" recommendation and the 5% target as "conditional", because the evidence behind it is weaker. It is still a good direction of travel.

For context, the CDC reports that US adults ate an average of 17 teaspoons of added sugars a day in 2017–2018 (19 for men, 15 for women).

Where your sugar actually comes from

The spoonful in your coffee is usually a small part of the total. Most of it comes from drinks and processed foods. The CDC names sugar-sweetened beverages, desserts and sweet snacks as the leading sources of added sugars in the US diet.

• Drinks. A 12 oz (355 ml) can of Coke has 39 g of sugar; a 330 ml UK can has 35 g. Either one is more than the NHS daily limit on its own. Fruit juice and smoothies count as free sugars too; the NHS says to keep them to a combined 150 ml a day.
• Breakfast. Cereals, flavoured yoghurts, granola, pastries, sweetened coffee drinks.
• Snacks. Cookies, cereal bars, sweets, ice cream.
• Hidden sugars. Ketchup and barbecue sauce, ready meals, sliced bread, "healthy" drinks, iced teas.

Example: Jordan in Chicago starts the day with a large orange juice, has a flavoured yoghurt at work, a soda with lunch and a couple of cookies at 4 pm. He never adds sugar to coffee and thinks he eats "pretty healthy". When he reads the Added Sugars lines, the soda alone is 78% of the Daily Value, and most of his day's sugar turns out to be something he drank.

Reading a label in 20 seconds

In the US, the Nutrition Facts label introduced in 2016 shows Added Sugars in grams and as a % Daily Value; large manufacturers had to use it from January 1, 2020, smaller ones from January 1, 2021. The FDA's rule of thumb: 5% DV or less is low, 20% DV or more is high.

In the UK, the NHS thresholds for sugar are: more than 22.5 g per 100 g is high (red), 5 g or less is low (green), anything between is medium (amber). The "of which sugars" line on UK and EU labels counts all sugars, added or not, so plain yoghurt shows some sugar from milk.

Whichever country you're in, check the ingredients list. Ingredients are listed by weight, largest first. Sugar, glucose syrup, glucose-fructose syrup (high-fructose corn syrup in the US), dextrose, maltose, honey, agave syrup, fruit juice concentrate: the more of them there are and the higher up they appear, the sweeter the product.

Is sugar addictive? What the science says

The idea that sugar works like a drug is everywhere. In 2016, Margaret Westwater, Paul Fletcher and Hisham Ziauddeen at the University of Cambridge reviewed the animal and human evidence. Their conclusion: there is little evidence to support sugar addiction in humans. In rats, binge-like behaviour shows up only when access to sugar is intermittent, and the authors argue it comes from that pattern of access and highly palatable food, not from sugar's chemistry. They warned against building "sugar addiction" into public health policy before the evidence exists.

What that means for you: cravings are real, but they behave more like a habit triggered by context (4 pm at your desk, the evening show, tiredness) than like withdrawal. Habits can be changed with the methods in our guide on how to break a bad habit: find the trigger, add friction, and replace the behaviour.

Will your taste buds adjust?

You'll often read that after a few weeks "you won't like very sweet food any more". The research is more mixed.

• In 2016, Paul Wise and colleagues at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia asked 16 adults (13 of whom completed the key tests) to replace 40% of their calories from simple sugars for three months, and compared them with 17 adults who ate as usual. By month three, the low-sugar group rated the same puddings about 40% sweeter. But how much they liked them had not changed.
• In 2026, the Sweet Tooth trial (Čad and colleagues, Wageningen University) followed 180 adults for six months while providing about half their energy needs, with 7%, 35% or 80% of the supplied foods tasting sweet. There was no difference between groups in liking for sweet taste or in body weight, and afterwards people drifted back to their usual intake.

The honest takeaway: don't count on your palate transforming to keep you on track. Count on what you buy, what's in your cupboards and what you do at 4 pm.

The 4-week plan

Each week builds on the last. One target at a time is what makes it stick.

Two things make the biggest difference:

• Change your environment, not your willpower. Don't buy what you don't want to eat at 10 pm. Put water and fruit where you can see them and cookies out of sight or out of the house. Shopping with a list helps your budget too (see our grocery budget guide).
• Plan a replacement, not just a ban. "At 4 pm I have an apple and a tea" works better than "no more cookies".

Tracking your four weeks

One row per week, one box per day: 1 = goal kept, 0 = missed, j = planned joker (a birthday, a celebration). Here is Jordan's log for the habit "no sugary drinks".

For more on tracking, see our habit tracker guide, and for realistic timelines, how long it takes to form a habit.

What about sweeteners?

Swapping a regular soda for a diet one cuts sugar, but it isn't the recommended end point. In May 2023 the WHO advised against using non-sugar sweeteners for weight control, because there is no evidence of long-term benefit on body fat. It is a conditional recommendation and does not apply to people who already have diabetes. The new US guidelines also say no amount of non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended. Water is the goal; a diet soda can be a bridge in week 1, not the destination.

Frequently asked questions

Do you get withdrawal symptoms when you quit sugar?

Many people report strong cravings in the first days, especially at the times they used to eat something sweet. But the Cambridge review found no solid evidence of drug-like withdrawal in humans. Cravings are mostly about habit and context, and they ease as your routine changes.

Is fruit too sugary?

No. Sugar in whole fruit isn't a free sugar under WHO and NHS definitions, and fruit brings fibre. Juice and smoothies are the issue, because they're quick to drink in large amounts.

Are honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar healthier?

For the WHO and the NHS, honey and syrups are free sugars like any other. Switching sugars doesn't cut sugar.

Do I need to cut out sugar completely?

For a healthy adult, the aim is to get under the limits, not to never eat cake again. If you have diabetes, prediabetes or another medical condition, talk to your doctor before changing your diet: this article is general information, not medical advice.

In short

Cutting down on sugar works better in stages than cold turkey: drinks first, then breakfast and snacks, then hidden sugars, one target per week. Don't wait for your taste buds to change; change your cupboards and routines instead. First step: for the next two days, write down everything you drink and add up the grams of sugar on the labels.

Sources

• World Health Organization, Guideline: Sugars intake for adults and children, Geneva, 2015: who.int; "Healthy diet" fact sheet, updated 2026: who.int.
• NHS, "Sugar: the facts": nhs.uk.
• US Food and Drug Administration, "Added Sugars on the Nutrition Facts Label": fda.gov; "Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label": fda.gov.
• US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, January 2026, as summarised by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu.
• CDC, "Get the Facts: Added Sugars" (intake data 2017–2018): cdc.gov.
• Coca-Cola US, "Coca-Cola Original" nutrition facts (39 g per 12 fl oz): coca-cola.com; Coca-Cola, "How much sugar is in Coca-Cola Original Taste?" (35 g per 330 ml): coca-cola.com.
• Margaret L. Westwater, Paul C. Fletcher and Hisham Ziauddeen, "Sugar addiction: the state of the science", European Journal of Nutrition, 55(Suppl 2), 2016: doi.org/10.1007/s00394-016-1229-6.
• Paul M. Wise, Laura Nattress, Linda J. Flammer and Gary K. Beauchamp, "Reduced dietary intake of simple sugars alters perceived sweet taste intensity but not perceived pleasantness", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 103(1), 2016: doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.115.112300.
• Eva M. Čad et al., "The Sweet Tooth Trial: A Parallel Randomized Controlled Trial Investigating the Effects of a 6-Month Low, Regular, or High Dietary Sweet Taste Exposure on Sweet Taste Liking…", American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 123, 2026: doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.041.
• World Health Organization, "WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline", 15 May 2023: who.int.

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