27 of the volunteers identified as Latino and 16 identified as African American. Overall, dietary sugar was reduced to just 10 percent of the kids’ calories.
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The transformation in the kids was nearly immediate.
“This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful, not because of its calories or its effects on weight, sugar is metabolically harmful because it’s sugar”. Moreover, the majority of studies conducted in this subject do not separate sugar from calories, making it even more complicated. Thirty-three of the 43 participants lost weight – a significant average of 2 pounds per person over nine days.
There have been many studies promoting the dangers of sugar to one’s health, or conversely, arguing that sugar isn’t as deadly as previous research had suggested.
There are lots of reasons sugar can have a direct effect on weight and metabolism.
When table sugar, otherwise known as sucrose, is digested in the body, half of it is comprised of fructose while the other half is glucose.
The association added that the study had insufficient data on what types of sugars – fructose especially – were contained in the children’s diets, and the study relied on self-reported information, which the association called “unreliable”.
Dr. Mark Corkins, a scientist with the University of Tennessee states that he feels that Lustig’s study is “important” but that he hopes that people don’t get to carried away with its findings.
“The positive message is that you can very quickly reverse a bad picture [of health] in a very simple way”, by removing added sugars, said Jean-Marc Schwarz, a professor at Touro University California near San Francisco and senior author of the paper. The researchers wanted to see what effect purging sugar would have, while keeping the children’s caloric intake the same.
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Black and Hispanic children were chosen for the study due to having higher risk of conditions of metabolic syndrome.
Pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, the study’s lead author, said that the findings of this new study have clearly pointed out that sugar causes metabolic damages, not because its weight impact or the calories it contains. Baseline fasting blood levels, blood pressure, and glucose tolerance were assessed before the new menu plan was adopted. The researchers also note the diets were intentionally dominated with “kid food” – turkey hot dogs, potato chips and pizza – bought at local supermarkets. They also found that uric acid, which is created with the breakdown of certain foods like anchovies, increased unexpectedly, and they weren’t able to explain why this happened. Rather, it is not necessarily that raw sugar is bad, but sugar is in so many processed foods that children are getting too much of it and this can cause severe health problems, even in youth.
Dr Lustig says his study was careful to avoid this: researchers ensured the children participating in the study maintained the same weight and were encouraged to eat more if researchers saw their weight falling. Reducing t can help in weight loss and will also improve health outcomes.
Blood pressure dropped, bad cholesterol levels fell, and the blood-fat content improved, as did liver function.
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Results show that all the measures of metabolic health improved, without the need of changing the number of calories consumed, without doing exercise or trying to lose weight. These factors increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
