Tag Archive for: sugar

Is Sugar the Problem?

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The questions I left you with on Thursday were related to the press and scientific reaction to the article about the sugar industry published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Was it worth all the press on CNN, Time, and even Treehugger.com? I don’t see it that way and I’ll explain why.


The Article

The paper in JAMA was not a study (1); it was a review of correspondence and papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. It was more investigative journalism than science . . .

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Sugar: New Villain?

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Health by headlines continues, this time, from one of the Journals of the American Medical Association. The headlines revolved around how the sugar industry influenced research and scientific publications in the 1950s through the 1980s. A group of researchers, affiliated with the Philip Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, examined documents from the Sugar Research Foundation and correspondence between scientists who examined research on the role fat and sugar play in the development of cardiovascular disease. The scientists involved have all died; this was an examination of their papers archived in the universities where they spent their careers as well . . .

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Improvements in the Nutrition Facts Labels

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The new nutrition facts labels are out and as promised, I’m going to tell you what I think is important about them. Let’s get right to it.

  • The listing of calories per serving is large enough that you can actually read it without searching for it. This is the biggest positive change; I had problems finding it at times and now, it’s the biggest type on the label.
  • The serving size is clearly identifiable. This should eliminate the misdirection food manufacturers used to use to suggest that a half . . .

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The Bottom Line on the Latest Sucralose Study

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“Sucralose causes cancer.”

“Sucralose prevents cancer.”

You’ve got to be confused when you read those recent headlines about the same research study! You read or listen to my messages because you want to know what I dig out of the original research to get past the confusion. Well, let’s get to it.

 

The Data

The data were messy (1). When you look at the numbers in the table that reported the incidences of cancers, the patterns were not clear. Using the data on the male mice, the incidence of cancers went . . .

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Does Sucralose Prevent Cancer?

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After Tuesday’s message, I’m sure that you were reading labels and getting ready to throw out foods that contain sucralose based on that single study (1). I’d wait a while, at least until I get finished reviewing this study. Today let’s take a look at another headline that says sucralose prevents cancer in some mice (2). This was an article written by Emily Willingham, a regular contributor to Forbes. She did what I usually do: read the actual research paper and then check out the claims the authors made. I’ve read it, but . . .

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Sucralose: A Tale of Two Headlines

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One of my biggest complaints about health news is science by headline. Over the weekend, the headlines exploded with the news that in a recently published study, sucralose caused cancer! You know that’s going to catch my attention. Artificial sweeteners are part of the third-rail of health topics that include GMOs, soy, and vaccinations. What made this so interesting was that there was another headline based on the same study that said sucralose reduced the rate of cancer. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week.

Let’s start with the “sucralose causes cancer” headlines . . .

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“In Defense of Food”: The Key Omission

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The movie “In Defense of Food” is a must see, as I’ve said. I think it makes the most reasonable presentation for what we should and should not eat to be healthy. But it also has a glaring omission.

In the movie, a segment focuses on the Hadza, a nomadic tribe in Tanzania and one of the last cultures who are still hunter-gatherers. They eat what they find and occasionally kill. A staple of their diet is very fibrous root vegetables.

The movie also does a segment on a group of elderly 7th Day Adventists. They believe their . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Beliefs

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Fried food. Refined carbohydrates. Soft drinks. High fructose corn syrup. All of these have been independently examined and implicated in causing the obesity epidemic and associated conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Just last week, Dr. Robert Lustig and his research group published a study on children and sugar intake. The researchers lowered the sugars in the diet to 10%; they continually adjusted the kids’ food intake to give them the same number of calories but with starchy carbohydrates such as pizza, baked potato chips, and other starchy processed foods. The researchers found improvement in factors associated . . .

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