The drive for healthy diets has targeted over-consumption and excess fat in food. “Now, there’s a fuill-on war on sugar,” says Vox, laying out why the subject is more complicated than it first appears and offering “11 facts to clear up the confusion.”
Three-quarters of packaged food and drink in the United States include sweeteners of some type, according to a study in Lancet. When foodmakers cut back on fat in the mid-1980s because of warnings about cholestorol, sugar was the ingredient that put taste back into foods. Nowadays, Americans consume more than 100 more calories a day in added sugars versus 235 calories in the late 1970s.
There’s no argument about sugar’s connection to obesity and chronic disease, says Vox, but there’s debate if it’s the major culprit. “In a 2015 paper, a group of researchers from around the world pointed out that the calorie supply overall increased during the same time obesity rose,” says the Vox article by Julia Belluz.
The Atlantic says “there hasn’t been enough time to fund and conduct definitive trials” about sugar’s place in nutrition. The author of the article, Nina Teicholz, who questioned the evidence behind USDA’s nutrition guidelines, says critics were too quick to condemn a recent study that found “low” or “very low quality evidence to support official advice to limit sugar in diets. Too often, she says “experts and policy makers have passed judgment before that good science was done.” The author of the book “The Big Fat Surprise: Why butter, meat and cheese belong in a healthy diet,” Teicholz says that endorsement of low-fat diets resulted in higher consumption of grains and sugar, “now regarded as the probable cause of the obesity and diabetes epidemics.”