Sugar in the Diet.
A friend of mine is currently purging sugar from
his diet for the next month. A great
gift you can give yourself is to free yourself from the possible addictive
nature of high sugar foods. This got me
thinking about some of the common questions and issues regarding sugar that
arise during my Clinical practice regarding sugar. Hope they help you!
o It
has been well established that consumption of sugar can stimulate over consumption by increasing reward mechanism feedback in the brain (Kanoski 2012).
o This
suggests that hippocampal-dependent modulatory control of feeding behavior can
be compromised by typical Western foods including saturated fats and simple
sugars (Kanoski 2012).
o Sugar
sweetened beverages have been implicated in high calorie intake due to low
satiety and low nutrient density (Maersk, Belza et al. 2012).
o There
is recent suggestions that sugar addiction although real does not lead to
obesity or increase the risk of developing obesity (Peters 2011). Seemingly contrarily, it was suggested that
food addiction is an underlying subtype of obesity, however, upon further
investigation scores on the Yale Food Addiction Scale suggestive of food
addiction were more likely to be associated with co-morbid diagnosis of
depression, binge-eating disorder and ADHD compared to their age and weight
equivalent controls (Davis, Curtis et al. 2011). This suggests that individuals with these
co-morbidities likely have a higher propensity to use food for self-medication (Davis, Curtis et al. 2011).
o The
AHA released a statement that consumption of not more than 25 g of sugar for
women and 37.5 g sugar for men per day respectively (Johnson, Appel et al. 2009). Consumption of more than this amount
increases risk of heart disease independent of the weight gain that would most
likely also occur.
o Therefore,
it’s important to reduce intake of sweetened beverages, simple sugar containing
food items and shift intake to more slowly-digestible and resistant starches (Aller, Abete et al. 2011). These have been shown to protect people from
the weight gain that occurs with higher sugar intake. The confusing part is, many well meaning
advisors will tell clients that carbohydrate amounts are the problem and not
specifically the amount of simple easily available carbohydrates (remember that
fiber is technically part of carbohydrates, but not available). Furthermore, consuming protein along with
carbohydrates acts to slow the digestion and absorption of the
carbohydrate. Specifically, protein
containing beverages significantly increased satiety and were associated with
higher nutrient density (Maersk, Belza et al. 2012).
o Finally,
if we consume a diet high in low glycemic index foods it is more likely that we
will meet our nutrient recommendations including adequate but not excessive
calorie intakes (Louie, Buyken et al. 2012).
Therefore, our take home message, based on the evidence should be that we
need to consciously decrease our intake of simple sugars and focus on more
complex and less processed fruit and vegetable sugar and starches. We should increase our intake of protein, fibers
and healthy fats in place of the higher levels of simple sugars, both of which
can result in significant health benefits.
I hope you enjoy this section. Look for my next Blog post in the near
future!
Take care.
Dan
Citations
