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Anybody else seen the article on the dangers of sugar?
- Thread starter hanadr
- Start Date
Daibell
Master
Hi. Yes, read it and pleased to see the article. Gradually we're getting there and the public are being educated that their food is loaded with 'junk' sugar. Yes, the Dieticians would say sugar isn't dangerous as many (most?) haven't a clue about diet as we have seen from posters who have been newly diagnosed and been to see the 'Dietician'. If there are any Dieticians reading this perhaps they could try to defend their position with regard to diabetes?
Edit to clarify: I think Lustig's advice is generally sensible but "right for the wrong reason". As such, there is ample room to correctly disagree with his ideas.
If you had read Lustig's book you would have noticed a few things:
1) Lustig claims that sugar is unquiely bad because it combines glucose (metabolised as carbs) and fructose (metabolised as fat). This hinges on his idea that we have a buffers* to allow us to consume arbitrarily large amounts of either fat or carbs isolation without ill effect which will get overwhelmed if we consume any amount of carbs mixed with fat which is, frankly, absurd.
* in turn based on the observations that cultures without america's obesity problem either eat mostly carbs or mostly fat
2) His only evidence is a correlation of sugar consumption and obesity completely ignoring confounding variables (such as the consumption of sugar being a proxy for the availability of food - if you are starving you are going to go for Tesco value rice rather than Coke)
3) Lustig himself admits (not until chapter 16 though) that the theoretically plausible negative effect of consuming fructose does not exist - J. l. Sievenpiper et al., "Effect of fructose on body weight in controlled feeding trials" which blows his theory out of the water.
At the end of the day, his anti-sugar campaign is a plausible story seemingly supported by a few correlations but without a shred of real evidence. Sugar may well be bad for you but the studies Lustig himself cited show that the problem is how sugar affects our consumption of food or the addition of extraneous calories to food (do you have a smaller serving of deep-fried chips compared to oven-cooked chips?) rather then due to how fructose is metabolised.
If you had read Lustig's book you would have noticed a few things:
1) Lustig claims that sugar is unquiely bad because it combines glucose (metabolised as carbs) and fructose (metabolised as fat). This hinges on his idea that we have a buffers* to allow us to consume arbitrarily large amounts of either fat or carbs isolation without ill effect which will get overwhelmed if we consume any amount of carbs mixed with fat which is, frankly, absurd.
* in turn based on the observations that cultures without america's obesity problem either eat mostly carbs or mostly fat
2) His only evidence is a correlation of sugar consumption and obesity completely ignoring confounding variables (such as the consumption of sugar being a proxy for the availability of food - if you are starving you are going to go for Tesco value rice rather than Coke)
3) Lustig himself admits (not until chapter 16 though) that the theoretically plausible negative effect of consuming fructose does not exist - J. l. Sievenpiper et al., "Effect of fructose on body weight in controlled feeding trials" which blows his theory out of the water.
At the end of the day, his anti-sugar campaign is a plausible story seemingly supported by a few correlations but without a shred of real evidence. Sugar may well be bad for you but the studies Lustig himself cited show that the problem is how sugar affects our consumption of food or the addition of extraneous calories to food (do you have a smaller serving of deep-fried chips compared to oven-cooked chips?) rather then due to how fructose is metabolised.
PhilT
Well-Known Member
AMBrennan said:
The correlation doesn't work in the UK where sugar consumption has been fairly static for a few decades while obesity has risen.
phoenix
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No doubt that I prefer to eat non processed foods and think we'd probably all be better off eating fewer of them but I don't think that Dr Lustigs arguments are well supported.
As PhilT says the correlations don't work for the UK if we use what should be more reliable data than that used in the study. The correlations in Lustig's study rely on the FAO food availability stats. These don't necessarily match with consumption (waste for example isn't included, huge factor in developed countries) . Data from the UK diet and Nutrition study shows that the amount of sugar in the diet has remained fairly static for the last decade. ( with, from memory, a slight downward trend in recent years ).
The study also demonstrated that a 1% increase in GDP levels corresponded to a 1.07% rise in diabetes prevalence (p<0.05), consistent with the notion that economic development is a powerful correlate to diabetes prevalence' (interesting to think of all the possible reasons for this)
After reading the Telegraph article I followed one of the commentators links to this blog which describes a debate on the subject of sugar comsumption (you can also follow it up by watching the session on video)
http://evolvinghealthscience.blogspot.f ... ds-to.html
I laughed when I read that Dr Lustig claimed that breast milk isn't sweet. That I definitely know is wrong. :wink: (you'll have to read the blog to see where that came in)
The account of the debate is followed by some interesting comments including some from RD Feinman, a professor of cell biology who is also prominent low carb advocate. He doesn't think that Lustig gets science on fructose right.
(and yes the debate was sponsored by the corn refiners but note Dr Feinman's comment on that.)
As PhilT says the correlations don't work for the UK if we use what should be more reliable data than that used in the study. The correlations in Lustig's study rely on the FAO food availability stats. These don't necessarily match with consumption (waste for example isn't included, huge factor in developed countries) . Data from the UK diet and Nutrition study shows that the amount of sugar in the diet has remained fairly static for the last decade. ( with, from memory, a slight downward trend in recent years ).
The study also demonstrated that a 1% increase in GDP levels corresponded to a 1.07% rise in diabetes prevalence (p<0.05), consistent with the notion that economic development is a powerful correlate to diabetes prevalence' (interesting to think of all the possible reasons for this)
After reading the Telegraph article I followed one of the commentators links to this blog which describes a debate on the subject of sugar comsumption (you can also follow it up by watching the session on video)
http://evolvinghealthscience.blogspot.f ... ds-to.html
I laughed when I read that Dr Lustig claimed that breast milk isn't sweet. That I definitely know is wrong. :wink: (you'll have to read the blog to see where that came in)
The account of the debate is followed by some interesting comments including some from RD Feinman, a professor of cell biology who is also prominent low carb advocate. He doesn't think that Lustig gets science on fructose right.
(and yes the debate was sponsored by the corn refiners but note Dr Feinman's comment on that.)
