Why 20 grams of sugar daily?

This is a copy of the post over at fattoskinny.net about sugar where I have commented on

Siltz:

Is 20 grams of sugar/day the generally accepted amount where ketosis begins or is most efficient?  Does the amount of sugar/day needed to lose weight vary per person?

Me:

I can only back up what Doug is saying as I had a very similar experience to him. My carb limit for weight loss was, when I first started, exactly around 20 grams per day. You’ve probably already heard this before but it’s worth saying again, is that, carbs can enter our diet in the most insidious of ways and as a general rule of thumb, I think you can assume that the more processed the food is, the higher will be its carbohydrate content, usually in the form of added sugars and fillers in order to make the processed food taste okay which is obviously a clear call to eat as naturally as possible. If you know where your food is coming form and you can verify that the sources or producers of that food do little or low processing then on the haul, you don’t have too much of a problem meeting that all important 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. Simply, the more we educate ourselves on what’s good to eat and what’s not good to eat, the greater our level of success will be.

Hope that helps,

Mark