To lower health risks including obesity and tooth decay, people living in the Americas and Western Europe should cut their intake of sugar in half, the World Health Organization says.

Both children and adults should consider reducing the daily percentage of sugar in their energy intake to less than 10 percent, WHO said in releasing new guidelines.

For adults, that would be around 12 teaspoons or 50 grams of sugar, the health agency of the United Nations said.

Currently the average in South America is 130 grams per adult per day, 95 grams in North and Central America and 101 grams in Western Europe.

The world's lowest average consumption rate, around 30 grams, is in equatorial and southern Africa, WHO reported.

The global average of daily sugar consumption rose from 58 grams per person in 2003 to 63 grams in 2013, it said, an increase of around 10 percent.

Reducing the consumption below 5 percent would go even further that the 10 percent reduction goal in preventing chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes and cancers that have been linked to poor diets, WHO officials said.

"The reason we are focusing on sugar is that we really have seen the important association with weight gain and obesity is a major public health concern for many countries, an increasing concern," said Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the organization's Department of Nutrition for Health and Development.

"Where do we find free sugars? In reality we find them in a large number of products, in fact in the majority of products," he said.

There can be as much as 40 grams of sugar, equivalent to about 10 teaspoons, in a single can of sugar-sweetened soda, he said, and even fruit juices like apple and orange juice, seen by many people as a healthy alternative, can have around 25 grams.

"Actually it is very easy to exceed the recommendation of 12 teaspoons if you think of having maybe a bowl of breakfast cereals in the morning, then maybe you have a can of soda sometime during the day then you have for dinner a sweetened yogurt, you are already above the 10 percent," Branca said. "You are already at approximately 15 teaspoons."

The new guidelines were not received well by some. The Sugar Association, a trade group in the U.S., released a statement criticizing them, claiming the link between sugar and chronic diseases was based on "weak and inconsistent" data.