The sugar industry responds to evidence implicating sweeteners in the obesity epidemic.
In terms of excess body fat, the “well-documented obesity epidemic may simply be “the tip of the fat iceberg.” It has been estimated that 91 percent of adults (nine in ten of us) and 69 percent of children in the United States have excess fat, a condition defined as having “an excess of body fat sufficient to impair health”. This can occur even in people who are “normal weight and not obese, often due to excess abdominal fat.” The way to know if you have excess fat is if your waist circumference is more than half your height. What is causing this epidemic? As I analyze it in my video. Does sugar cause weight gain?a main cause may be all the added sugars we consume eating.
A century ago, sugar was announced as one of the cheapest forms of calories in the diet. Just ten cents of sugar could provide thousands of calories. Dr. Fredrick Stare, “Harvard’s sugar-promoting nutritionist” bristly to the term “empty calories”, writing that the calories in sugar were “not empty but full of energy”; In other words, full of calories, of which we are now consuming too many. Excess body weight of the American population corresponds to a daily excess of approximately 350 to 500 calories on average. So, “to reverse the obesity epidemic,” that’s how many calories we need to cut, but what calories should we cut? As you can see below and at minute 1:33 in my videothe majority of Americans fail To meet the Dietary Guidelines sugar limit, consume that same number of calories in added sugars every day: Twenty-five teaspoons of added sugars equal about 400 calories.
There are staunch defenders of sugar. James Rippe, for example, allegedly received $40,000 a month from the high-fructose corn syrup industry, in addition to the $10 million he received. paid for your research. Even Dr. Rippe considers It is “indisputable that sugars… contribute to obesity. “It is also inarguable that sugar reduction…should be part of any weight loss program.” And, of all the sources of calories for limit, since sugar is nothing more than empty calories and contains no essential nutrients, “reducing sugar consumption is obviously the starting point.” And, again, this is what researchers funded by companies like Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola say. The lead author of “Dietary Sugar and Body Weight: Have We Reached a Crisis in the Obesity and Diabetes Epidemic?”, Richard Kahn, is famous for his defending of the American Beverage Association (the soft drink industry) and was the chief scientific officer of the American Diabetes Association when signed a million-dollar sponsorship deal with the world’s largest candy company. “Maybe the American Diabetes Association should change its name to the American Junk Food Association,” said the director of a consumer advocacy group. What do you expect from an organization that started with funding from the pharmaceutical industry?
The conclusion is that “randomized controlled trials show that increasing sugar intake increases energy [calorie] intake” and “increase sugar intake directs to body weight gain in adults, and… sugar reduction leads to body weight loss in children.” For example, when researchers random When individuals increased or decreased their table sugar consumption, the added sugar group gained about three and a half pounds in ten weeks, while the reduced sugar group lost about two and a half pounds. A systematic review and meta-analysis of all these ad libitum diet studies (real-life studies in which sugar levels were determined). change but otherwise people could eat whatever they wanted, they found that a reduced intake of dietary sugars resulted in decreased body weight, while “a higher intake of sugars was associated with comparable weight gain.” . The researchers found that, “taking into account the rapid weight gain that occurs after increased sugar intake, it seems reasonable to conclude that counseling related to sugar intake is a relevant component of a strategy to reduce the high risk of overweight and obesity in most countries. .” That is, it is reasonable to advise people to reduce their sugar consumption.
Findings from observational studies. have However, it has been “more ambiguous”, as an association was found between obesity and the intake of sugary drinks, but failed to show consistent correlations with the consumption of sugary foods. However, most of these studies are based on self-reported data and “this is likely to have introduced bias, especially since lack of information about diet has been found to be more common among obese people and foods high in sugar are those that are most often not reported. .” However, trace levels of sucrose can be measured in urine, which provides an objective measure of actual sugar intake and also excludes contributions from other sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup. When the researchers did this, discovered that, in fact, sugar intake is not only associated with higher odds of obesity and greater waist circumference in a snapshot in time, but it was also seen in a prospective cohort study over time. “Using urinary sucrose as a measure of sucrose intake,” the researchers found that “participants in the highest versus lowest quintile [fifth] for sucrose intake had a 54% higher risk of being overweight or obese.”
“Deny The evidence that sugars are harmful to health has always been at the center of the sugar industry’s defense.” But when the evidence is It is undeniable, as the link between sugar and cavities, goes from denial to deviation, like trying to divert attention from restricting intake to thinking about some kind of “cavity vaccine.” It seems that we have reached A similar point occurs with obesity, where companies like the Sugar Bureau move from denial to deflection by commissioning research that suggests that obese people would not benefit from losing weight, a position that contradicted by hundreds of studies on four continents involving more than ten million participants.
For more information on Big Sugar’s influence, check out The sugar industry tries to manipulate science.
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