Free · No signup · Updated October 2026
Sugar calculator: how much added sugar is in your meal?
The American Heart Association’s limit for added sugar is 25 g a day for women and 36 g for men; a 12-ounce can of cola carries about 39 g. Type a meal or a drink, or snap a photo, and see its added sugar in grams and teaspoons. Sugar in whole fruit and plain milk doesn’t count.
- Best for checking a meal or drink for added sugar
- Free, no account, no email
- Results in a few seconds
- Estimated from USDA values
Get Cloche on your iPhone, free on TestFlight
How much added sugar per day is too much?
The American Heart Association sets 25 g (6 teaspoons) for women and 36 g (9 teaspoons) for men. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans allow up to 10% of calories, 50 g on 2,000 calories.
The calculator compares your meal with 20 g, a stricter sample amount Cloche uses for fatty liver, where liver guidance asks people to cut sweet drinks first. Four grams of sugar is about one teaspoon.
Which everyday plates and drinks carry the most added sugar?
Sweet coffee drinks, soda, pastries and sauces such as teriyaki and barbecue carry the most. These six carry the most in Cloche’s food data.
| Plate | Portion | Estimated added sugar | Of 20 g reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blueberry Pancakes | 3 pancakes, maple syrup | 52 g | 258% |
| Waffle | 1 waffle, syrup | 30 g | 150% |
| Cheesecake | 1 slice | 25 g | 124% |
| Blueberry Muffin | 1 muffin | 24 g | 118% |
| Ice Cream | 1 scoop | 17 g | 84% |
| Granola with Yogurt | 1 bowl | 16 g | 80% |
How does the sugar calculator work?
Describe the meal or drink the way you’d say it. Cloche splits it into foods and sizes each one. It counts added sugar apart from the sugar in fruit and milk, so a banana reads as zero and a sweet yogurt does not.
For the whole day, not one meal, see Cloche for fatty liver. More free tools: the standard drink calculator and the a1c calculator. Every number is an estimate; we publish how far off the estimates run against USDA reference foods.
Questions people ask
How many grams of added sugar a day is OK?
The American Heart Association sets 25 g for women and 36 g for men. The US guidance allows up to 50 g on a 2,000-calorie day.
How many teaspoons is 25 g of sugar?
About 6 teaspoons. One teaspoon of sugar weighs about 4 g.
Does fruit count as added sugar?
No. Sugar inside whole fruit and plain milk isn’t added sugar. Juice concentrate, honey, syrup and sugar stirred into food are.
Why does sugar matter for a fatty liver?
The liver turns extra fructose into fat. Liver guidance asks people with a fatty liver to cut sugar-sweetened drinks first.
See which drinks and meals carried the sugar
Cloche is a food journal for iPhone. Say what you ate or drank or take a photo, and it keeps added sugar and alcohol for every day, then shows which ones carried the most.
Cloche is on TestFlight, Apple’s app for trying an app before its release. It’s free while it is. Leave your email and the invite comes from [email protected].