If you roll your eyes at studies that tell you what to eat and what not to eat so that you can live a long, healthy, happy, prosperous life, get ready to roll.
Researchers have completed a study that was designed to determine if sugar is really the demon substance that we’ve been told that it is. Driving this research is the undeniable trend showing that in the United States more and more children are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease at a younger age. In September, the youngest person ever to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes was a three year old girl.
The occurrence of these maladies are much more common in American children than they are in other countries such as Pakistan, India, and China which leads scientists to believe there is more to it than caloric intake.
Sugar Study On Children Proves What We Think We Already Know
A study conducted by researchers at UC San Francisco and Touro University California involved 43 children between the ages of 9 and 18. All of the children were obese and had at least one other co-morbidity such as high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, and impaired fasting glucose.
During the 10-day study the children were provided specific foods to eat but it was not food that you would consider healthy fare. They ate kid-friendly foods like hot dogs, pasta, cereal, bagels and potato chips. But, the catch was their overall dietary sugar was reduced to 10 percent of their calories.
The children had to weigh themselves each day and if they lost weight they were instructed to eat more so they would maintain their original weight. This was done to prevent confusion as to whether the reduction in sugar or weight loss was having an effect on their health.
Despite intensive efforts to maintain the participant’s baseline body weights, at the end of the 10-day study, all participants experienced about a 1% loss. And all other makers were down including diastolic blood pressure, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, fasting triglycerides, and LDL.
Researchers have concluded that the health detriments of sugar, and fructose specifically, are independent of their caloric value or effects on weight.
Dr. Robert Lustig at the University of California, San Francisco, who has led studies on glucose and fructose says there is a direct link between sugar and metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions including increased blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, excess belly fat and abnormal cholesterol. Lin says, “When you metabolize fructose in excess, your liver has no choice but to turn that energy into liver fat, and that liver fat causes all of the downstream metabolic diseases.”
What This Means For You
It is true that studies come and go and, in some cases, what was proved last year has since been debunked. However, I can’t imagine that a year from now scientist will be saying, “Nope. We were wrong. Sugar is good for you. Eat all you want.”
Whether your goal is to lose weight or improve your metabolic markers, when it comes to sugar, eating less of it is the way to go. The American Heart Association recommends no more than six teaspoons of added sugar a day for women and no more than nine a day for men. If your sugar intake is out of control, tracking your sugar to make sure you stay within the AHA guidelines is a good place to start.
