Search results: sugar

I was alerted to this story by the FoodNavigator-USA headline: Sugar content in soft drinks cut by nearly a third as voluntary efforts fall way off target.

Public Health England’s latest progress report on the food and drink industry’s sugar cutting efforts reveal significant changes in areas where the sugar tax applies, but a disappointing lack of progress with the voluntary sugar reduction programme.

The Year 2 progress report finds:

• The sugar in taxed drinks affected by the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) decreased by 28.8% between 2015 and 2018.
• For non-taxed products, the reduction in sugar was only 2.9%.
• Total sugar increased by 2.6%: the largest increases were for ice cream, candies, sweet spreads, and cookies.

Moral: if you want companies to reduce sugar in their products, tax them.

Coming soon to a supermarket near you: Baby Shark cereal.

I am so out of it.  I never heard of the song, Baby Shark, before seeing this story about Kellogg’s new cereal—aimed at toddlers.

The song, I gather, is adored by babies, less so by their parents, but never mind: it is expected to sell lots of cereal.

I searched for a Nutrition Facts label online, but could not find one (the cereal won’t be available until mid-September, apparently.

I did see this at the bottom corner of the box:

One and one-third cup of this stuff provides 150 calories, 190 mg of sodium, and 15 grams of sugars.  Oh great, 40% of calories from sugars.

Another sugary cereal for kids, this one for little kids!

Do food companies market directly to children?  Yes, they do.

I included a chapter on sugar and dental disease in my 2015 book, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), because billions of people have decayed teeth and other dental problems that could have been kept intact by dental hygiene, fluoride treatment, or—consuming less sugar or sugary drinks.

But:

• Dental disease has a long history of being overlooked as a public health problem.
• Sugar has a long history of being ignored as a cause of dental disease.

This may now be changing.

The Lancet has a new series on oral health:

It’s great that The Lancet has finally taken this on.

Here’s The Guardian’s Account.  There should be a lot more press coverage.  Dental conditions affect billions of people throughout the world.

You may think, as I do, that everyone would be better off eating less sugar, but that’s not how The Sugar Association sees it.  This trade association for sugar producers funds research to demonstrate that eating sugar is a good thing and not harmful.

Here’s what The Sugar Association says:

The Sugar Association is committed to transparent engagement with researchers, external partners and consumers to address knowledge gaps and support independent, peer-reviewed science. Recent literature suggests this framework, rooted in transparency and communication and reflected in our Operating Principles, leads to increased public confidence in industry-funded research,* a goal the organization is working to achieve.

The asterisk refers to Achieving a transparent, actionable framework for public-private partnerships for food and nutrition research, a consensus report written by, among others, representatives of the International Life Sciences Institute, a well known front group for the food industry, and other organizations with ties to food companies.

The Sugar Association lists some of its recent publications [you can’t make this stuff up]:

• Bakke AJ, Stubbs CA, McDowell EH, Moding KJ, Johnson SL, Hayes JE. Mary Poppins was right: Adding small amounts of sugar or salt reduces the bitterness of vegetables. Appetite. 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2018.03.015. [Mary Poppins was talking about medicine, not vegetables: “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, In a most delightful way.”]
• Bailey RL, Fulgoni VL, Cowan AE, Gaine PC. Sources of Added Sugars in Young Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Low and High Intakes of Added Sugars. Nutrients. 2018;10(1):102.

Nutrition Today Supplement: Sweet Taste Perception and Feeding Toddlers. March/April 2017 – Volume 52 [The Sugar Association funded the conference that resulted in this supplement, which it also funded].

• Dwyer JT. Good Nutrition in Toddlers. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S1-S2.5.
• Bailey RL, Barr SI. Introduction: Sweet Taste Perception and Feeding Toddlers. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S3-S5.
• Achterberg C. A Perspective: Toddler Feeding, Science, and Nutrition Policy. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S6-S13.
• Kleinman RE, Greer F, Cowart BJ, et al. Roundtable Proceedings: The Role of Innate Sweet Taste Perception in Supporting a Nutrient-Dense Diet for Toddlers, 12 to 24 Months Old. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S14-S24. [Kleinman is co-chair of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee]
• Murray RD. Influences on the Initial Dietary Pattern Among Children From Birth to 24 Months. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S25-S29.Johnson SL, Hayes JE. Developmental Readiness, Caregiver and Child Feeding Behaviors, and Sensory Science as a Framework for Feeding Young Children. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S30-S40.
• Hayes JE, Johnson SL. Sensory Aspects of Bitter and Sweet Tastes During Early Childhood.Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S41-S51.
• Moshfegh AJ, Rhodes DG, Goldman JD, Clemens JC. Characterizing the Dietary Landscape of Children, 12 to 35 Months Old. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S52-S59.
• Welsh JA, Figueroa J. Intake of Added Sugars During the Early Toddler Period. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S60-68.
• Palmer CA. Oral and Dental Health Considerations in Feeding Toddlers. Nutrition Today. 2017;52(2):S69-S75.

I’m indebted to Mimi Griffith for telling me about an article in Food Dive about a new product Domino must think you can’t live without: Golden Sugar.

It’s “Less Processed” !

And, “bakes and dissolves like white sugar.”  Of course it does.  It’s sugar.

OK, so it hasn’t gone through the last stage of refinement to white sugar and has a slight taste of molasses.  But it’s still sugar.

Less processed or not, Golden Sugar is sugar; it is not a health food.

Domino is taking advantage of current advice to avoid “ultra-processed” junk foods.  The company must believe that you will think this is healthier than white sugar.  Not a chance.

I”m curious to know:  Is Golden Sugar any different from the Turbinado sugar Domino currently sells?  Does Domino think you will relate this to Golden Rice, the poster child for GMO’s?  What was Domino’s marketing team thinking?

White, tan, or brown, sugar is sugar—50% glucose, 50% fructose, 4 calories per gram.

Most of us would be better off eating less of it, unprocessed or processed.

I am occasionally asked to comment on new studies that appear.  Practice Update: Diabetes asked for a comment on this study:

VS Malik, et al.  Long-Term Consumption of Sugar Sweetened and Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Mortality in US Adults. Circulation. 2019;139:00–00. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.037401

The study concluded: “Consumption of SSBs [sugar-sweetened beverages] was positively associated with mortality primarily through CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality and showed a graded association with dose. The positive association between high intake levels of ASBs [artificially sweetened beverages] and total and CVD mortality observed among women requires further confirmation.”

Here’s what I said:

This study is based on analyses of data from two remarkably large and long-standing investigations of diet and disease risk. The investigators looked for correlations between mortality and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) and found them. More than two SSB servings a day was associated with higher mortality, particularly from cardiovascular disease, and, to a lesser extent, cancer.

Thus, this study adds to the increasing body of evidence associating SSBs with poor health. SSBs provide calories, but nothing of nutritional value. Other studies correlate SSBs with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. A further correlation with increased mortality is not surprising, but it is good to have it confirmed.

These results associate high intake of SSBs with disease risk, but cannot prove that SSBs causedisease. Epidemiological studies like these, based on self-reported dietary data, require careful interpretation. In part, this is because intake of SSBs tracks closely with other lifestyle characteristics. Heavy SSB users tend to be more sedentary, more likely to smoke, to consume more meat and calories, but to eat fewer vegetables than light users—overall, to have less healthy dietary habits in general. Still, reducing or eliminating SSB intake is harmless and could well improve health.

Unsavory Truth came out late last year, but I’m following up by posting recent examples of the issues it covers.  Here, for example, is a recent study that caught my eye:

The role of dietary sugars in health: molecular composition or just calories?  Philip Prinz. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2019).

A big argument in nutrition right now is whether the metabolic dysfunction that results from excessive consumption of sugars is due to the sugars themselves or to the calories they produce (or, I suppose, to both).

The author who attempted to answer this question conducted a lengthy and detailed review of research on the effects of sugars on obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions .  His conclusion:

Current scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that dietary sugars themselves are detrimental to human health and the cause of obesity as well as NCDs [non-communicable— chronic—diseases]. Data from human studies clearly shows that it is the excess amount of calories, also consumed in form of dietary sugars, that promotes obesity and with that favors NCDs. For sucrose, further research is needed in order to evaluate the relevance of its molecular composition, especially in comparison with other macronutrients.

In other words, you don’t have to worry about sugars; just don’t overeat anything.

So, who paid for this?

The paper provides no disclosures of funding or conflicted interests.

But if you click on Philip Prinz, you will see that he is with the Department of Nutritional Sciences, German Sugar Association, Berlin, Germany

Comment

My interpretation of this literature generally favors calories (see my book with Malden Nesheim, Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics).  As I see it, when it comes to weight gain, how much you eat matters more than what you eat, especially if your diet is reasonably healthy.

But I would be much more confident in conclusions like these if they came from a researcher whose salary did not depend on producing desirable results for a sugar association.

And everybody would be better off eating less sugar, for reasons of nutritional health, if not necessarily weight.

Public Health England has a report out on how the country’s food industry is doing with its pledges to reduce sugar.

The goal was to reduce sugar in the most popular food products by 20% by 2020:

The results: about a 2% reduction in food products, but an 11% reduction in drinks.

Public Health England considers this an “encouraging start.”

The Guardian says the food industry has failed to meet its targets.

Here’s how Public Health England explains all this:

If this is going to work, all food companies must set targets and take action to meet them.

We could do this here….?