The U.S. secretary of health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reference to sugar as “poison” is helping spotlight rising global consumption and market distortion.
When Kennedy Jr. banned some artificial sugar dyes from processed public food in April 2025, he illuminated the global consumption situation.
The American Heart Association brings the federal context forward by citing that each American utilizes 60 pounds of sugar yearly.
This is for a country that sells sugar at higher prices than international averages, and so being cheap is not a drive.
Market Distortion
Still, pricing and other market factors are the real culprits for the world’s hiking sugar consumption levels.
According to the Financial Times, whenever the commodity’s rate dips to $0.15/pound, sugar moguls turn cane to fuel production.
As soon as fuel breaks the sugar surplus by diminishing the raw material, the prices of ethanol and oil interfere.
Ethanol pricing depends on strong petroleum rates to stay afloat and sinks whenever oil prices decline, pulling sugar with it.
One way to rescue low ethanol pricing is to call back cane conversion into sugar, which in turn creates sugar surplus.
This cycle has lately become almost commonplace, which explains why since mid-2023, sugar has been seeing a 5% price drop.
Whenever pricing is down, consumption increases for the sweetener becomes accessible to everyone when cheap.
Worse, some studies show that during steep pricing times, people sometimes actually gobble up more sugar than ever.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), families in the UK used 0.20-0.27 g/100 g of sugar in the 2008-2010 financial meltdown.
This was because households were now opting for cheaper calorie sources from foods they originally considered unhealthy. This dependence increased by 1.4% (for single family households), which contributed to uptick consumption.
“Healthy” Fructose
Market ingredients, from synthetic food dyes to fructose in both fruits and corn-based syrup, also drive consumption.
Corn syrup labels on fruit pies readily invoke a picture of a health, claiming glucose from syrup nourishes the brain.
The same case goes for natural sugar in fruits and vegetables like carrots, although these cannot be “poison.”
So, rising consumption of sugar worldwide owes alike to market factors as it does for the natural love for sweet things. To see the bigger picture, below are statistics on the global utility for the commodity.
World Sugar Consumption Statistics
According to the International Sugar Organization (ISO), the world consumed 177.882 million tonnes of sugar in 2023. This baseline year also marks the time when sugar prices last averaged US¢22.19 per pound. The year’s highest rate touched US¢27.14 a pound, per ISO data. Since then, the market price has been hovering below US¢20 a pound and has been helping satiate ever-surging demand.
How has sugar demand performed since 2023?
In the 2022-23 market year, the world consumed over 176 million tonnes of sugar, which then rose by 1.074 million tonnes in 2023-24. Estimates meanwhile put the 2024-25 consumption levels at 178.79 million tonnes.
Which countries top sugar consumption?
Luxembourg leads the sugar per capita at 165 g per person per day, while Australia comes fifth at 102 g (2022). The United States has a per capita of 126.4 g per day, as of 2022. In consumption volume, the U.S. tops, at 22.7 million tonnes, followed by Germany and the Netherlands.