In the world of nutrition, there is always a new craze that involves vilifying a food group. Keto, carnivore, plant-based are all examples of eliminating a food group in order to become happier and healthier. Carbohydrates are a common villain amongst fad diets and sugar is considered to be the root of all evil. Sucrose, also known as table sugar, is a disaccharide composed of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose. A simple google search on fructose and sucrose will display hundreds of results mentioning the terrible effects of sugar on your health and sugar is often thought to be the main culprit of the obesity epidemic.
Sugar itself is thought to be independently fattening but a study conducted compared sugar/fructose levels between two groups with calories equated in order to see if sugar was uniquely fattening. The study was conducted over 6 weeks and involved two groups, one with a high sucrose diet vs a low sucrose diet, and equated carbohydrates, proteins, and fats amongst both groups. Each participant was supplied with every meal over the 6 weeks and were all fed a hypo-energetic diet meaning they are all in a caloric deficit. The results of the study were that both groups lost significant and equal reductions in body weight and body fat percentage. Additionally, there were equal reductions in LDL and decreases in depression and hunger (Surwit et al., 1997).
Although the study cited is over twenty years old, it was able to control the participants' caloric intake for over six weeks whereas many nutrition studies use self reported data. With most things in life, moderation is key and this study was able to demonstrate that when calories were controlled, sugar or sucrose, did not account for fat gain in a hypo-energetic diet.
Surwit, R. S., Feinglos, M. N., McCaskill, C. C., Clay, S. L., Babyak, M. A., Brownlow, B. S., Plaisted, C. S., & Lin, P. H. (1997). Metabolic and behavioral effects of a high-sucrose diet during weight loss. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 65(4), 908–915. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/65.4.908
Along with obesity, what's also terrifying is the cardiac and metabolic risk factors at an earlier onset. This article I read describes the positive trend of the high-sugar diet and obesity in the United States. It talks about pediatric obesity and how an overweight child can have the same vasculature age as a healthy 45 year old adult (Faruque et al., 2020). This immediately increases their risk for developing coronary artery disease, dyslipidemia, and increased insulin resistance at a much younger age (Faruque et al., 2020).
ReplyDeleteAlso your article reminds me a lot about the biochemistry current events topic that I'm working on, except it involves a high-fat diet only. Over the course of 8 weeks the researchers fed two groups of mice a normal chow diet and a high-fat diet (at least 60% kcal from fat) and found that the HFD mice had become more sensitive to pain (Tierney et al., 202). This is also true for a high-sugar diet which is linked to chronic pain. Like you said, moderation is key.
Faruque, S., Tong, J., Lacmanovic, V., Agbonghae, C., Minaya, D. M., & Czaja, K. (2019). The Dose Makes the Poison: Sugar and Obesity in the United States - a Review. Polish journal of food and nutrition sciences, 69(3), 219–233. https://doi.org/10.31883/pjfns/110735
Tierney, J. A., Uong, C. D., Lenert, M. E., Williams, M., & Burton, M. D. (2022). High-fat diet causes mechanical allodynia in the absence of injury or diabetic pathology. Scientific Reports, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18281-x