Nutrition, it turns out, is bloody complicated.
And not everyone agrees that high fructose corn syrup is the driving factor in the obesity crisis. Some experts point out that consumption of the sugar has been declining for the past 10 years in countries including the US, even while obesity levels have been rising. There also are epidemics of obesity and diabetes in areas where there is little or no high fructose corn syrup available, such as Australia and Europe.
One 15-year study... found that people who consumed 25% or more of their daily calories as added sugar were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease than those who consumed less than 10%. Type 2 diabetes also is attributed to added sugar intake. Two large studies in the 1990s found that women who consumed more than one soft drink or fruit juice per day were twice as likely to develop diabetes as those who rarely did so.
But again, it’s unclear if that means sugar actually causes heart disease or diabetes. “More energy intake than energy expenditure will, in the long term, lead to fat deposition, insulin resistance and a fatty liver, whatever the diet composition,” says Luc Tappy, professor of physiology at the University of Lausanne. “In people with a high energy output and a matched energy intake, even a high fructose/sugar diet will be well tolerated.”
Sugar also has been associated with addiction… but this finding, too, may not be what it seems. A review published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017 cited findings that mice can experience sugar withdrawal and argued that sugar produces similar effects to cocaine, such as craving. But the paper was widely accused of misinterpreting the evidence. One key criticism was that the animals were restricted to having sugar for two hours a day: if you allow them to have it whenever they want it, which reflects how we consume it, they don’t show addiction-like behaviours.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180918-is-sugar-really-bad-for-you
This article reads like it was written by the Corn Refiners Association as nothing more than a "lets muddy the waters about high fructose corn syrup"
ReplyDeleteMy favorite, the complaint about the study linking addiction behaviors similar to cocaine, with the best they could argue was as long as they got their fix, there wasn't a problem
One key criticism was that the animals were restricted to having sugar for two hours a day: if you allow them to have it whenever they want it, which reflects how we consume it, they don’t show addiction-like behaviours.
I might be wrong, but I read, "whenever they want" to mean "at a time of their choosing", rather than, "in unlimited quantities". Though it doesn't state the amounts consumed.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor I started to paraphrase, then decided to copy/paste, so the italicized text is verbatim from the article.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is, if given unlimited access to cocaine, people don't show addiction like behavior, they just end up wasting away or over dosing. Just like sugar
Ray Bernache I think it would be interesting to know if restricting the time of the availability has any effect on the amount consumed, which is the relevant factor for health.
ReplyDeleteI found the article quite persuasive. I still got the message that reducing sugar intake was generally a good idea; "it's not the root of all evil" doesn't mean "it's a very healthy food". The methodological criticisms sound quite reasonable to me.
Rhys Taylor My take away was it was trying it's best to down play the harm from what is still a heavily abused substance
ReplyDeleteFurther, as for the claimed drop in use while obesity is still on the rise, in 1965, our caloric high fructose per capita use was zero ( HF wasn't introduced till the 70's) with all our caloric sweetener use almost entirely based on refined cane, or beet sugars (98.8 lbs)
where as today, our high fructose use is still 42.5 lbs per capita, whereas the peak was 1999 at 63.8 lbs per capita.
No sugar use isn't the only cause, but there's virtually zero health benefits for adding sugar.
Yes it does improve the taste of many things, but the reality is, with decreased sugar use, there is a decreased need to sweeten, all we need to do is stop trying to defend/subsidize an unhealthy, unnecessary additive.