Here is a link to the actual journal article on the study, since the NYTimes omitted it for some reason (currently free to access):<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/abstract" rel="nofollow">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/abstrac...</a><p>PDF:<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/pdf" rel="nofollow">http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/pdf</a><p>Lustig, R. H., Mulligan, K., Noworolski, S. M., Tai, V. W., Wen, M. J., Erkin-Cakmak, A., Gugliucci, A. and Schwarz, J.-M. (2015), Isocaloric fructose restriction and metabolic improvement in children with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Obesity. doi: 10.1002/oby.21371<p>As an aside, it's very strange that the article is not cited in the NYTimes post. A journalist should at least give the DOI at the bottom if there is not a link to the article in the body of the text.<p>Edit: I left this same comment on the NYTimes article and the text now links to the journal (though my comment was not approved). Seems like a win! NYTimes editorial staff: thank you!
I completely removed added sugar from my diet for the past 6 months. It is hard to describe how my life changed.<p>I am much better at swimming, less tired, I eat a lot less. I lost weight the first 3 months and now my weight is very stable.<p>Cutting added sugar is not very hard but it requires some willingness.<p>The food producers put sugar everywhere: bread, red beans, smoked salmon, yogurt, etc. You just need to read the ingredients to avoid it. You will quickly learn which type of product is ok and which type is not.<p>Today I am more attracted to a fruit than a cup cake or an ice cream, and it feels good :)
>The proposed changes have been strongly opposed by the food industry as unscientific. The Sugar Association, a trade group, said the F.D.A. was “making assertions that lack adequate scientific evidence,” and the Grocery Manufacturers Association criticized the standards the agency used to establish the daily value as being “inadequate.”<p>That's the tobacco industry smoke-screening evidence about the dangers of smoking all over again.
Note : the study selected children who were considered to be "particularly high risk of diabetes and related disorders. All the subjects were black or Hispanic and obese, and had at least one or more symptoms of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that includes hypertension, high blood sugar, abnormal cholesterol and excess body fat around the waist."<p>I did not read that there was a control group.
This article has all the hallmarks of poor science:
1) very small study size
2) very short study period
3) self reported consumption
4) marginal p-values
5) highly biased first author.
There's a very revealing and entertaining documentation about the rise of sugar in our lives, drawing parallels between the tobacco lobby and the sugar lobby: Sugar Coated (2015). Highly recommended. It was streaming on tvo, but somehow the stream does not work anymore. I only found a german version on arte.<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4425138/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4425138/</a><p><a href="http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/054774-000/die-grosse-zuckerluege" rel="nofollow">http://www.arte.tv/guide/de/054774-000/die-grosse-zuckerlueg...</a><p><a href="http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/sugar-coated" rel="nofollow">http://tvo.org/video/documentaries/sugar-coated</a> (not working)<p>In some ways, sugar is even harder to control than tobacco. Smoking is a choice, but sugar is essential for living. It plays a big role in our society. Remember the last birthday party/christmas/anything without sugar overdose?... Me neither.. And its hard to prove that over-consumption is unhealthy.
With all the discussion going on here, I would like to pop up a quick question:<p>How can one go about learning about nutrition?<p>I have tried many, many times to do this, but I always run into these problems:<p>1: I can't find a "big picture" overview of the field, and thereby learn which areas to focus on<p>2: Most of what I find seems to be anecdata, or poorly constructed studies <i>"We followed these 7 people..."</i><p>3: The rest of which I find is always biased by what the author is trying to promote - Low Carbs! No Carbs! Water! Fruit fruit fruit!!! and suffers from points 1 and 2 above...<p>I would really like some good recommendations for books on learning nutrition science. From the ground (coffee) up.
I'm not sure how this is news to anyone these days. There are a billion and one places you could go on the web, see on TV, read in books, or even speak with neighbours and the same advice would be given. Lots of sugar = bad. Less sugar = generally good.<p>The human body is quite remarkable in it's ability to adapt, the only thing this article adds is the '10 days' portion (pun intended), but even that isn't too surprising!
I'm seeing a lot of reactions that seem to imply the current situation with added sugar is okay, and that this research can be dismissed as being too specific in terms of sample subjects.<p>Let's be clear, this research is specific, and all it does is add yet another point in a massive cloud of evidence pointing towards the current dietary disaster that is added sugar.<p>But don't take my word for it, please, do your own quick research on the subject. Look up terms like Sugar+Diet or Sugar+Nutrition on Google scholar. Go through the abstracts, the literature reviews. And stop spreading baseless opinions, especially when it's potentially very harmful to the people reading them.<p>When you see a comment that poorly defends a valid position, reply by defending it properly, not by pointing out the flaws and/or following up with FUD when you haven't done basic research on the subject.
My mother always told me how angry it made her to see obese children.<p>If you're an obese adult, it sucks and there are things to say, but whatever you do you. But kids don't know, kids need to be taught. And you're basically 100% responsible for any kind of extra weight on your child.
When experimenting with intermittent fasting (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting</a>) I have also observed that my lust for sweets and other "unhealthy" foods completely disappeared. Somehow after a grace period the taste (In my subjective experience) gets much more aligned to foods that we know are considered healthy. I think adjusting ones diet to minimise sugar and highly processed food can do wonders for ones general health and well-being.
I believe it (not having read the article). I went Paleo when my blood sugar finally went from borderline diabetic to your blood sugar is now diabetic, you either get results or go on pills at my doctors suggestion. Just had my three month bloodwork done and the reduction in blood sugar and cholesterol are staggering.
As an anecdote, 10 days ago I decided to try and go nuclear with sugar and high GI foods (bread, rice, etc) for a month after watching this video:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyeor3z9EdQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyeor3z9EdQ</a><p>The first week I've been feeling <i>odd</i> and lethargic with the second day including flu-like symptoms. In little more than one week I've lost 1.5kg (~3 lbs). Now I start to feel more energetic and tomorrow I'll be hitting the gym for the first time since I started. If I manage to lose 10 lbs, I'll probably stick to the diet for some months more. (I needed to lose 40 lbs or so anyways)...
I can almost understand why Soylent makes headlines here, but articles about sugar being bad for you and bacon being bad for you? There are a hundred other places online I can read about this.
I posted a comment earlier today describing my own experience. I never said that everybody should stop eating food with added sugar, I just said it worked for me.<p>One main thing we don't mention in this thread is that sugar is addictive. Cutting sugar was hard like quitting somking was hard. If you never got addicted like I was, I guess it os hard to understand the problem. But when you are addicted it is hard to just know if you are hungry or not. So I choosed to go on the other extreme which works better for me.
I read an interesting article on how excess sugar clogs the tiny blood vessels and tissues where there aren't really any blood vessels.<p>Circulation in these areas won't be as great by the nature of things so clogging them up has a greater impact. It prevents nutrient/waste flow to tissues. Just think about that for a bit. Accumulating waste and blocking delivery of nutrients.<p>Balancing sugar intake and moving around, even if it's just walking, on a regular basis will fix you up real fast.
Robert Lustig, first author on this paper, has written a very accessible book on the same topic titled "Fat Chance" [0]. I enjoyed it, although I can't vouch for all of the science.<p>Full disclosure: I did stop eating sugary food after reading and watching some of Lustig's presentations, and I'm generally pleased with the results.<p>[0] <a href="http://amzn.to/1S7LmQY" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/1S7LmQY</a>
This is a very good first step - now we need more research into whether this holds for non-obese kids who are not Hispanic or black.<p>I.e. does cutting out almost all added sugars from the diet of a normal weight kid improve health outcomes?<p>Also note that the lead Author is Robert Lustig - I first ran into a lecture called "The bitter truth" by him against Sugar. So it seems to be a pet crusade of his (not that that invalidates the result).
Sure, I noticed an immediate difference when I cut back on extraneous sugar content like soda and junk food. I also lost about 15 pounds over the course of a month. I noticed a mild withdrawal but once you get past that and as time goes on, you crave it less and less. The human body does need a certain amount to function but those amounts are easily obtained via a healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.
"the findings add to the argument that all calories are not created equal."
Well pardon my french but no f<i>cking sh</i>t. Anyone person/system who strictly counts calories and completely looks over the fact that there are literally millions of other organisms involved in the digestive/energy process gets no love from me. Unfortunately its not as simple as calories in/calories out.
Lustig just doesn't give up. He has already been crushed by Alan Aragon five years ago.<p><a href="http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-the-fructose-alarmism-debate/" rel="nofollow">http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-...</a>
There is something called blue zone food, Okinawa islands. There have been a studies of the people who live longest and what they eat.<p>The study concluded you should cut down on sugar and white flour. Use fresh locally produced food and avoid processed foods.