American Heart Association Says Cut Back on Sugar!

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Can it be? Am I just imagining this headline? Or does someone finally get it? Not only am I providing the headline, but I’m also providing the actual study for your consumption. In the study, they do acknowledge many of the things that I regularly argue on this blog; however, they also say that many of my conclusions are either inconclusive, or doubtful due to supposed conflicting studies.

They acknowledge the insulin response that is brought on by refined and easily digestible carbohydrates. They don’t like the idea that a single food group (carbohydrates) would cause obesity all by itself, but in most cases, this is precisely the issue. It is true, however, that there are ways to become obese without food being the culprit since weight regulation is hormonal. It should not surprise us that anything which serves to upset the hormonal harmony in the body has the potential to cause obesity and countless other problems. However, I think that the condition of common and simple obesity that the majority of people experience falls squarely under the alternative hypothesis of obesity, which says that the drive to fatten is brought on by the effect on insulin caused by overconsuming refined and easily digestible carbohydrates.

Using food disappearance data and self-reported studies, these experts have concluded that Americans eat too much sugar. The adults eat approximately 22 grams of sugar per day (not counting the natural sugars and many other added sugars) and the teenagers eat 34 grams per day. I think these totals are very modest since they don’t take into account the added sugars.

The study relates:

As expected, a healthy, well-balanced diet contains naturally occurring sugars, because monosaccharides such as fructose and disaccharides such as sucrose and lactose are integral components of fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and many grains. In addition, sugars add desirable sensory effects to many foods, and a sweet taste promotes enjoyment of meals and snacks. In fact, when sugars are added to otherwise nutrient-rich foods, such as sugar-sweetened dairy products like flavored milk and yogurt and sugar-sweetened cereals, the quality of children’s and adolescents’ diets improves and in the case of flavored milks, no adverse effects on weight status were found. However, deleterious health effects may occur when sugars are consumed in large amounts.

Here, it should be obvious where the problem lies. These statements are clearly based on what was gleaned from the laboratory, largely from studies that have very limited usage in the real world. People depend on the sweet taste for enjoyment of these foods. Who, in their right mind would trade sweetened and spicy foods for supposedly healthier bland foods such as naturally sweetened fruits and vegetables? Either way, the problem is the urge for the sweet. Even if you start with a small amount of sweet, it’s only a matter of time before you will demand more. It’s also quite telling that the only way to get children to consume milk and yogurt products is to add sugar. The same is true with so-called healthy orange juice. As I have related before, glucose and vitamin C both compete for the same uptake mechanism in the body. Vitamin C does not get absorbed in the presence of sugar (as much as 26 grams in some major brands) so all the orange juice consumption is irrelevant. We see this same situation in Asian buffets. They coat meats in sugary sauces and people just overconsume these foods due to the sugar which prevent them from being sated. They go to buffets and eat until they are unable to move because of this.

Further evidence is provided by the food industry itself. A simple trip to the supermarket reveals aisles and aisles of low-fat foods. When you remove the fat from these foods, there is not taste and therefore they add sugar to compensate for the lack of taste. If sugar has this effect on insulin, then even foods that are not normally thought of as junk foods have to be considered “junk foods.” Sugary yogurt is junk food. Not much better than ice cream. I would say that Breyer’s all-natural ice cream (with about 5 ingredients) is much healthier than sugary, full-fat yogurt. The sugar would negate any health benefit one might derive from the yogurt.

On the basis of principles elucidated in the 2005 US Dietary Guidelines, the MyPyramid World Wide Web site estimates that these sugar intakes far exceed the allowance for discretionary calories, regardless of energy needs. Increases in the intake of soft drinks, fruit drinks, desserts, sugars and jellies, candy, and ready-to-eat cereals largely account for the increased energy intake from sugars/added sugars. Soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are the primary source of added sugars in Americans’ diets. Between 1970 and 2000, per-person daily consumption of caloric soft drinks increased 70%, from 7.8 to 13.2 ounces. Currently, US food labels contain information on total sugars per serving but do not distinguish between sugars that are naturally present in foods and added sugars. Thus, it is difficult for consumers to determine the amount of added sugars in foods and beverages. In 2006, the US Department of Agriculture published a database for the added sugar content of selected foods.15 In addition, several voluntary foodlabeling systems are in place or are being developed, some of which include criteria for limiting added sugars.

What I don’t understand is how they just gloss over the fact that American’s increased their soft drink consumption by 70 percent and then want to talk about added sugars, which clearly only make up a small contribution next to the main sugars. A 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola Classic contains 39 grams of sugar. Do they really want to quibble about the 1 gram per serving of added sugar in a Coke? Seriously? Not only that, but what about all the added sugar in low-fat foods? Why would this also not be considered a problem? How can someone consume sugar in moderation when it is found in practically everything these days?

Rachel K. Johnson, lead author of the statement published online Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, said it was time to give specific advice on how much added sugar Americans should be getting, not just advising moderation. Gee, you think?

I definitely agree with this part. Any reduction in sugar consumption would benefit our health greatly. The benefit would occur in a way not seen since the war years when Ancel Keys observed how we practically reversed chronic disease in the space of about six years. The same thing happened in Tokelau when the trading ship, the Cenpac Rounder ran aground and they were unable to deliver Western foods to the islanders. They returned to their native diets (no carbohydrates — or much less than before) and they had a total reversal in chronic disease. The transformation in each case was striking and it left an indelible mark on those who witnessed it. The problem was that they chose the wrong nutrient to vilify as they continue to do today. It’s significant that they are beginning to understand the role of sugar in this process yet they are still trying to rationalize and make it fit within the comfortable confines of their diet-heart beliefs.

Cross-sectional studies in humans link soft drink consumption with higher energy intake, greater body weight, and poor nutrition and suggest that excessive fructose consumption is playing a role in the epidemics of insulin resistance, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and type 2 diabetes mellitus in humans. For example, a recent, albeit small, metabolic study in overweight and obese adults suggests that consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages leads to dyslipidemia, increased fasting blood glucose, decreased insulin sensitivity, and increased visceral adiposity. Other trials have documented that limiting soft drinks only provides modest beneficial effects on weight in children.

They’re children, hello? Children can consume all sorts of garbage and they will continue to stay lean. Why? Because they are growing. They eat voraciously because they are growing. Their eating does not cause them to grow. When your head is stuck in the sands of the calorie-is-a-calorie theory then you cannot make sense of teenagers because they clearly defy the calorie religion. The same is true with a hibernator. You can take one and starve it yet it will still put on tons of fat in preparation for the winter. You can give it 50% of the food it would normally have and still find that the hibernator will put down the same amount of weight as the normally-fed hibernators. Weight is regulated by hormones, chiefly, by insulin. It has very little to do with how much one consumes. When one consumes carbohydrates it does make a difference but only because of the effect on insulin and insulin resistance. The level of resistance will determine whether or not fattening occurs. But obesity is only one of the many symptoms of the metabolic disorder of high insulin so the fact that one goes straight to heart disease or diabetes without gaining weight is immaterial. It still has the same cause. Only the lucky ones get fat.

This “small” study is likely one of the best studies they have at their disposal yet they find some way to marginalize it and say it’s not relevant in some fashion. For instance:

An emerging but inconclusive body of evidence suggests that increased intake of added sugars might raise blood pressure. Studies include animal studies in which rats were fed high doses of fructose, acute ingestion studies in which humans were fed high doses of different sugars, and more recently, epidemiological studies, such as the Framingham Heart Study, in which consumption of 1 soft drink per day significantly increased the odds of developing high blood pressure. Nonetheless, results from studies in humans are inconsistent and the chronic effects of a high intake of simple sugars on blood pressure remain uncertain. It is well established that when used to replace dietary fats, carbohydrates can elevate plasma triglyceride levels and lower levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol; however, the type of carbohydrate appears to influence lipid responses. A diet such as the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet that replaces fat with carbohydrate from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nonfat and low-fat dairy products does not increase triglycerides but still lowers high-density lipoprotein cholesterol somewhat. In the Women’s Health Initiative, the higher-carbohydrate diet had no effect on triglycerides or high-density lipoprotein
cholesterol.

See, the studies on rats are always garbage when it comes down to it, but when the rats exhibit something that they believe to be relevant, they have no problem advising humans to mimic the behavior of the rats as it must be good for humans too. When the rats don’t display the desired behavior, then the researchers remember that they are just rats and therefore the results should be discarded.

It is well-established that diets high in carbohydrates raise triglycerides, but this particular diet does not seem to. However, it does lower LDL by making the particles small and dense which are known to poke holes in arteries. They don’t mention this important detail and there’s another thing you should know: NONE of the vast cholesterol studies that lead to such an uproar have shown any benefit to lowering cholesterol in women. This still does not stop these idiots from recommending that women take cholesterol-lowering drugs or eat a diet that is designed to do the same. Women typically have higher levels of HDL than men but carbohydrates will still affect the apo B particles on the LDL and women with relatively high HDL numbers have still suffered from heart disease. It’s well-established that much of the conventional wisdom on cholesterol does not apply to women so why a woman would follow the expert recommendations is purely beyond me.

They know this yet they want to tout this as a benefit found in the Woman’s Health Initiative trial. However, they refuse to acknowledge the finding that the low-fat diet was not protective against anything. In fact, Nurses I and II have showed us that those who ate the most fat had the least incidence of heart disease. So just what did they find in the Woman’s Health Initiative, since these researchers brought it up?

The low-fat, high-starch diet that was the focus of dietary advice during the 1990s-as reflected by the USDA food guide pyramid-is dying out. A growing body of evidence has been pointing to its inadequacy for weight loss or prevention of heart disease and several cancers. The final nail in the coffin comes from an eight-year trial that included almost 49,000 women. Although the media have made much of the “disappointing” results from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Dietary Modification Trial, it would be a serious mistake to use these new findings as reason to load up on sausage, butter, and deep-fried fast food.

(People always say this in the face of evidence that blows apart their religion. There is ZERO evidence that loading up on sausage, butter and deep-fried fast food would be any worse than a low-fat diet and that’s just the truth. However, if you load up on that butter and lose the carbohydrates from the fast food, your health will be immaculate, just like mine!)

The trial and its findings

The Women’s Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial was started back in 1993, at a time when dietary fat was seen as a dietary evil and the low-fat diet was thought to be a straightforward route to preventing heart disease, some cancers, and the epidemic of obesity that was beginning to sweep the country. With funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, researchers recruited almost 50,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79 years. Of these, 19,541 were randomly assigned to follow a low-fat diet. Their goal was to lower their fat intake from almost 38% of calories to 20%. They were helped in this effort by a series of individual and group counseling sessions.Another 29,294 women were randomly assigned to continue their usual diets, and were given just generic diet-related educational materials.

After eight years, the researchers looked at how many (and what percentage) of women in each group had developed breast cancer or colorectal cancer. They tallied up heart attacks, strokes, and other forms of heart disease. They also looked at things like weight gain or loss, cholesterol levels, and other measures of health.

The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed no benefits for a low-fat diet. Women assigned to this eating strategy did not appear to gain protection against breast cancer,(1) colorectal cancer,(2) or cardiovascular disease.(3) And after eight years, their weights were generally the same as those of women following their usual diets.(4)

Recent studies report a significant increase of energy intake with increased sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among children, adolescents, and adults; however, evidence is inconsistent regarding the positive association between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and obesity. Because overweight and obesity are complex metabolic conditions, it is unlikely that a single food or food group is primarily causal. Many epidemiological studies, including those with cross-sectional and prospective study designs, have shown a positive relationship between higher intake of sweetened beverages and risk of overweight or obesity;
however, other studies have shown evidence against this hypothesis.

As Stefansson related in his book, Not by Bread Alone, what can you learn in a few days or weeks by tests on a few men that you do not already know from the centurylong experience of thousands?

They will completely ignore the evidence of the Inuit who ate a high-fat diet with no carbohydrates and great health and rather rely on small studies that may or may not have shown any benefit.

Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages ingested with meals has doubled. In a feeding experiment, increasing the size of sugar-sweetened beverages increased total energy intake from solid food. When the size of a regular cola was increased from 12 to 18 ounces, energy intake from food increased by 10% in women and by 26% in men. All things being equal, a small, persistent energy imbalance of 50 calories per day could result in up to a 5-pound weight gain over the course of 1 year.

And here we are back to the calorie belief and the misguided approach to the law of energy conservation. These studies cannot be relied upon when faced with these contradictions in thought. The truth will always be out there in a murky cloud until one actually experiences the things that they are pontificating against. Until one drops the carbohydrates altogether, then all of the data remains contradictory. On the one hand, they will cite a small study to say the results are inconclusive, but out of the same mouths acknowledge that soft drink consumption has risen and if the percentages are to be believed, this would account for 5 pounds per year. I don’t even have to quibble over the mechanism because the result is the same. Sugar causes weight gain and when you drink the sugar, this is far worse because you can easily ingest far more sugar in liquids than you can in food.

For once in my life, I advise you to listen to the American Heart Association and cut your consumption and that of those you love by any means necessary!

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Posted on August 27, 2009 at 10:40 pm by Charles · Permalink
In: Diet, Disease, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Insulin, Obesity

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