NEW YORK, Nov 18 (Reuters Health) -- There is no link between obesity and
sugar intake, according to two studies presented this week at the North American
Association for the Study of Obesity annual meeting in Charleston, South
Carolina.
"The bottom line is increased calories are the culprit" behind obesity,
not sugar, Dr. Maureen Storey said in an interview with Reuters Health.
"Choosing smaller portions is difficult," she added, but "people need to eat
less and exercise more."
Storey and Dr. Rich Forshee, of Georgetown University in Washington, DC,
studied data from a survey conducted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
They constructed a model that estimated how closely people follow the USDA Food
Guide Pyramid, and the percentage of the US recommended daily allowance of
selected nutrients they consume, based on the amount of added sugars,
carbohydrates, protein, fat, and alcohol they consume.
According to the model, "added sugars have a minimal... negative effect on
consumption of most of the food groups and nutrients," Storey and Forshee
report. The researchers found that alcohol had a much larger negative effect on
diet than sugars.
"According to our model, it would take 1,695 additional grams of added
sugars or 43.5 (12 oz.) cans of soda pop to replace one serving of dairy foods,"
the investigators explain. In comparison, "an additional 182 grams of alcohol,
the equivalent of 14 (12 oz.) cans of beer or 18 (3.5 oz.) glasses of red wine,
reduced the predicted number of dairy servings by one."
"Pragmatically, added sugars have virtually no effect on diet quality
whereas other dietary components, such as alcohol, have a relatively greater
negative impact on diet quality," Storey and Forshee conclude.
In the second study, Dr. D.R. Keast and colleagues, of the Michigan State
University in East Lansing, asked nearly 16,000 adults about their consumption
of sugar, fat, carbohydrates, and total calories. They also measured the
participants' body mass index (weight divided by height).
Keast's group reports that obese adults consumed fewer total calories than
non-obese adults, but fat made up a higher percentage of their calories. The
obese adults obtained a lower percentage of their calories from carbohydrates
and total sugars than the non-obese adults.
These results held true in both men and women, the investigators say. The
research team concludes that there is a "seesaw" relationship between sugars and
fat: as fat intake goes up, body mass index goes up, but as sugar intake goes
up, body mass intake goes down.
