NUTRITION & HEALTH
SWEET TRUTH
A spoonful is said to help the medicine go down – but according to a growing body of research, sugar may in fact be the key culprit behind the current global epidemic of obesity and chronic disease. Rhianon Howells takes a closer look at the evidence and asks what our industry can do about it
entirely resist its allure. We know it’s not good for our teeth or our waistlines, but it tastes so nice that we tell ourselves it can’t really do us much harm – after all, it’s not as high in calories or as likely to clog our arteries as fat, is it? All of which makes recent news reports about the very serious dangers sugar poses to our health a bitter pill to swallow. Last February, three American scientists led by Robert Lustig, a top endocrinologist and professor of clinical paediatrics at the University of California, published an article in the journal Nature, blaming sugar not only for the global obesity epidemic but also for a whole host of non-communicable chronic diseases. He compared its effects to those of alcohol, and called for governments to regulate sugar-rich products through measures such as taxation, sales restrictions and age limits. Although there’s not yet a consensus, Lustig and his colleagues are not alone in casting sugar as the main villain in the obesity/chronic disease debate. They may differ in the detail, but an increasing number of leading scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are concurring on this one fact: beyond merely adding calories, sugar is also a toxin that is seriously damaging our health.
S
ugar. Whether you add it to your tea, sprinkle it on your cereal or devour it in desserts, there are few of us who can
But what’s all this got to do with the health and fitness industry? According to Phillip Mills – CEO of group fitness provider Les Mills International, author of the book Fighting Globesity and self- confessed anti-sugar evangelist – the answer is: absolutely everything. “The fitness industry is becoming an alternative health industry. If we really want to provide a solution to the terrible health crisis we have in this world, we have to take on the food side of things – we can’t just be places where people come to pump iron and run on a treadmill,” he says. “As an industry, I think tackling this issue is both a responsibility and an opportunity – an opportunity to grow our brand and get people interested in being part of our movement.”
THE CASE AGAINST SUGAR So should sugar really be the primary target in the fight against obesity and chronic disease? And if so, why? The most obvious argument is one few people would challenge: it’s high in calories and has little nutritional value. “I think it’s hard to mount a specific case against sugar except in so far as it contributes to obesity,” says Dr Susan Jebb, head of diet and population health at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Human Nutrition Research unit in Cambridge, UK. “But in a country where two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, we need to eat fewer calories
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while maintaining our intake of essential micronutrients. That inevitably implies cutting back specifically on those items which add calories but few micronutrients – and this tends to put sugary products high on the list of targets.” Lustig’s case against sugar, however, is built on far more than the ‘empty calories’ argument. To quote the Nature article: “There is nothing empty about these calories. A growing body of scientific evidence is showing that fructose [a sugar molecule found in sweeteners added during food processing] can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills – slowly.” Fructose in itself is not inherently unhealthy. It is, in fact, commonly found in fruit where, surrounded by fibre, it digests slowly and helps keep blood sugar stable. The problem lies with the fructose in the refined sugars so liberally used by today’s big food manufacturers, not only in cakes, chocolate and soft drinks, but also in all sorts of dietary staples, from bread and breakfast cereal to cheese and sausages – including, ironically, many low- fat items marketed as health foods. In the US, the number one sugar
additive is a mass-developed product called high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), while in the UK and most other developed countries, sucrose extracted from sugar cane or sugar beet is the additive of choice. But what both have in common is a
November/December © cybertrek 2012
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