Has sugar been proven to be toxic?
Reducing consumption of sugar in children, without reducing calories or losing weight, can reverse the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. It is widely known that sugar has a detrimental effect on weight, however this study from California suggests that it is metabolically harmful, simply due to the fact that it is sugar. Dr Robert Lustig, the study’s lead author, claimed that his work was the ‘strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity’, but that it contributes to metabolic syndrome differently. The study was carried out on 43 children between the ages of 9 and 18 who were all obese, with at least one other metabolic disorder.
After evaluating total count and evenness the researchers found that there was no association with waist circumference, however, those participants with the greatest dissimilarity experienced increased weight gain. Diet quality was also measured using the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) score and the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) score. It was found that participants that had a greater dissimilarity also had a poorer quality. This suggests that in modern diets, eating ‘everything in moderation’ could be more detrimental than eating a smaller number of healthy foods. This shows that there should be increased focus on the consumption of more healthy foods in order to create a varied diet.
