While this study, published in the journal Obesity on Monday, also does not prove causation, it provides a revealing look at the details of what changes in the body and what appears to remain stable with less sugar.
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Metabolic syndrome can include high blood pressure, high blood glucose levels, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels.
The children were all obese and had at least one other chronic disorder, such as high blood pressure.
The researchers provided the study participants with nine days of food, including all snacks and drinks.
The fascinating experiment, which swapped out added sugar in children’s diets for starchy foods – in effect, swapping fructose for glucose – hammers another nail into the coffin of the phrase, “a calorie is a calorie”, the researchers claim.
The food choices were created to be “kid’s food” so included turkey hot dogs, crisps and pizzas all available in supermarkets. And to make sure that the children didn’t lose weight – the researchers wanted to test the effect of the food swap, not any resulting weight loss – they were also instructed to weigh themselves every day and to eat more food if necessary. The study obviously singles out sugar and keeps in line with the belief of Robert Lustig, lead author of the study and an endocrinologist, that sugar intake plays a big role in obesity, not just calorie intake.
“This internally controlled intervention study is a solid indication that sugar contributes to metabolic syndrome, and is the strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity”.
The children still consumed the same number of calories from carbohydrate as before, but total dietary sugar was reduced from 28% to 10% and fructose from 12% to 4% of total calories. The results showed that most of the children’s weight loss was due not to fat loss, which would have produced such metabolic improvements, but water or muscle weight, which should have made their metabolic health worse.
Insulin levels dropped by up to a third, bad cholesterol by 10 points and liver function improved.
How long does it take for health benefits to kick in from cutting sugar in the diet?
“They told us it felt like so much more food, even though they were consuming the same number of calories as before, just with significantly less sugar”, Schwarz said in a statement.
It added: “Eating sugars as part of a healthy balanced diet does not cause obesity or type 2 diabetes”.
Despite the short period of time and a diet still heavy on processed food, the researchers said they found striking results. “Up until now, there have been a lot of correlation studies linking sugar and metabolic syndrome”, Dr. Lustig said.
“This study demonstrates that ‘a calorie is not a calorie.’ Where those calories come from determines where in the body they go”.
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The finding raises serious concerns about the health effects of sugar, and calls into question the longstanding belief that “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie”, regardless of its food source, said Dr. Jeffrey Mechanick, director of metabolic support in the division of endocrinology, diabetes and bone disease at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York City.
