High refined sugar intake linked to a 23% higher risk of mental disorders

While I am all for reducing sugar consumption, this one sentence lead me to completely distrust this paper:<p>&gt; The study found no link between sugar intake and new mood disorders in women and it is unclear why. More research is needed to test the sugar-depression effect in large population samples.<p>There is literally no further comment on why this effect was not observed in women. Why? To me, this means it&#x27;s possible that some confounder is at play here.<p>I&#x27;m also with Xeoncross (another commenter here) who observed that this study took place from 1983 to 2013. Quoting him:<p>&gt; Sugar consumption has gone up, so has US inflation, less overall exercise, social media consumption, and a variety of other possible negative factors.<p>So you&#x27;re telling me that the link was not observable in women, AND that many social&#x2F;economic realities changed in the course of the study, and we&#x27;re supposed to believe there was little room left for confounders? This reeks.

Related: Ketogenic Diets are used to treat medication-resistant epileptic seizures. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epilepsy.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;treating-seizures-and-epilepsy&#x2F;dietary-therapies&#x2F;ketogenic-diet" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epilepsy.com&#x2F;learn&#x2F;treating-seizures-and-epilepsy...</a><p>There&#x27;s also substantial evidence that the ketogenic diet is useful for treating other mental disorders: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;mind-guest-blog&#x2F;the-fat-fueled-brain-unnatural-or-advantageous&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;mind-guest-blog&#x2F;the-fat...</a>

It might be just as well that increased sugar intake is caused by mental disorders, as a form of self-medication.<p>In my case for example, my sugar consumption fell drastically since I received ADHD medications. It turns out I was using sugar as a stimulant&#x2F;calming agent for years, and no doctor properly figured it out.

I&#x27;m curious if this includes unprocessed fructose, glucose, lactose, etc. I eat quite a bit of fruit, but my refined sugar intake is much lower than it used to be due to making an effort to cut sugary things out of my life (unless eaten with intention).

Seems like a pretty worthless study that indicates almost nothing. Lazy journalists, who are honestly worse than worthless, pick these lame correlation studies up and propegate weird misconceptions about increasing &quot;risk factors&quot;. It&#x27;s intellectually dishonest to even call the correlation increased &quot;risk&quot; when the cause of the link cannot be feasibly confirmed.<p>The sane assumption from this study is that depression or addiction prone people are more likely to look for satisfaction in glutany. Unfortunately that doesn&#x27;t generate as much fear&#x2F;ad rev.

&gt; &quot;The report, published today in Scientific Reports used data from the Whitehall II cohort and analysed the sugar intake from sweet food and beverages and occurrence of common mental disorders in over 5000 men and over 2000 women for a period of 22 years between 1983 and 2013&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t eat refined sugar because it is harmful. However, I wonder how the study accounted for the MANY changes that took place between 1983 and 2013. Sugar consumption has gone up, so has US inflation, less overall exercise, social media consumption, and a variety of other possible negative factors.

Can someone explain to me how you can find that people with mental disorders are no more likely to consume high sugar than people without, but also find that people with high sugar intake are more likely to develop mental disorders?

How much longer until we stop pretending that population correlation studies is science?

Conversion to dumb american: 16 teaspoons of sugar per day was considered high.<p>(If you don&#x27;t enjoy cooking from scratch, try a mass-based recipe instead of a traditional volume-based recipe. It is so much faster and more convenient.)