Study: Cutting Sugar From Diet Shows Immediate Health Benefits (wiley.com)

turp182 writes: As reported in TIME and other news sources, a recent study found that reducing sugar intake in obese children caused several biological health markers to improve over a short period of time (9 days). Summarizing the results: "Overall, their fasting blood sugar levels dropped by 53%, along with the amount of insulin their bodies produced since insulin is normally needed to break down carbohydrates and sugars. Their triglyceride and LDL levels also declined and, most importantly, they showed less fat in their liver." The full study is available online.

Comments

Note if we can stop..

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting sugars in everything! You can't even buy prepackaged meats without sugar added!

Re:Note if we can stop..

[Frigga's Ring]

I'm not a nutritionist, but from what I've read and watched, very little food at the grocery store does not contain sugar (or corn syrup). Kraft Recipes lists sugar or corn syrup as one of the top ingredients for most of their Oscar Mayer brand prepackaged cold cuts - http://www.kraftrecipes.com/pr...

Re:Note if we can stop..

[Zalbik]

Try buying actual "food" at the grocery store rather than prepackaged boxes of chemicals.

Vegetables have shockingly low amounts of sugar. Similarly with flour, eggs, rice, beans, meat, etc.

Re: Note if we can stop..

[Kohath]

Have you ever read the ingredients of prepackaged food? Hint: it doesn't contain just one ingredient.

I think one of those chemicals keeps people from being preachy know-it-all douchebags. People without that chemical in their system spend their time annoying everyone around them with a weird sort of self-focused food-related righteousness, as if you think you discovered eating itself and everyone else around you needs to know how superior you are at it.

Re:Note if we can stop..

[ClickOnThis]

Vegetables have shockingly low amounts of sugar. Similarly with flour, eggs, rice, beans, meat, etc.

Flour, rice and other carbs may have low amounts of sugar, but our bodies turn them into sugar pretty quickly.

Re:Note if we can stop..

[turp182]

Stick with Boar's Head deli meats. They are more expensive, but it's quality meat.

Cheap meat is very chemical laden (sugar isn't the half of it).

Re:Note if we can stop..

[JoeMerchant]

That produce department runs at a loss - it's just there to make people feel good that they're buying some "real" food too. Most of what is there is genetically modified to be as big and heavy as possible while still resembling the namesake commodity, with no regard to nutritional content and little regard to taste. Almost all of what is there is produced on the world Ag market and container shipped to you, picked at the peak of shelf life and delivered just in time to not spoil before you get it to the car.

Try growing your own, if you can still get your hands on decent seed stock, or pay double+ for "real" organics, if you stores in your state even carry them. The difference is remarkable - and if you do try growing your own, you'll appreciate how cheap the "real" organics actually are.

Meanwhile, the wage-slaves of the world who have enough time to skip the fast food restaurants barely have time to shop for pre-processed packaged foods at the grocery store - are you actually expecting them to take time out to prepare food instead of preparing their children for the NCLB standardized tests or watching 4 hours of passive entertainment a night?

Re:Note if we can stop..

[KGIII]

Hmm... Do you have a citation for that produce department running at a loss? I modeled pedestrian traffic and that included needing to prioritize traffic to optimal areas based on projected profit margins. (Yes, foot traffic is optimized and no, you're not immune.) As near as I know, the bakery operates at close to a loss but not quite a loss - they're able to write down donations and destroyed goods (as they can in the produce section). There are loss leaders - usually on something called an 'end cap' but those are not always loss leaders - they're actually sometimes more expensive.

Anyhow, I can go on but I'll be interested in your citation. The data may have changed in eight years but it seems unlikely. With write-downs the produce section was, as I recall, one of the higher profit areas where fresh dairy was one of the lowest profit areas but one of the greatest traffic draws (which is why it's in the back and on the left, usually).

Re:Note if we can stop..

[KGIII]

It is changed per demographics thus the qualifier. And no, it's not all being written off - it's more subtle than that. Additionally... One of the reasons they like produce (and the bread) is because the smell. The smell makes you salivate and makes you hungry. So there's that aspect as well. It doesn't, however, really run at a loss in the end of the year accounting. The pre-packaged bread stuff is actually pretty profitable as are the pre-packaged snacks but that's a whole other topic.

During certain times of the year they may need to just write their losses off which makes it balance, for the quarter, on the books. As an aside, as I understand it, they actually get more from writing it off which is why much of it isn't donated even though there's some small amount of shelf life left. There are also certain times of year when the produce section is quite profitable (this varies by grocer). Those that can get local produce save a ton and actually often charge more for it. Over all, if I recall correctly, only a small portion of the year and only certain items are at a loss and the whole thing tends to be pretty profitable compared to the bakery and fresh dairy.

I'm not sure when you worked at Publix, specifically in Florida, but you may have noticed they did a design change in 2006-2008 region. I'm unable to disclose who did the work on that. I can say that I'm sort of familiar. ;-) They're trying something new and I don't know what the results have been. They were changing some stores, see the panhandle region, to put some of the dairy in center and not too far from the front. However, walking there, that's another matter. Unless you cut through the checkout counter (usually full or blocked by the little plastic chain if not busy or has traffic in it) then check the layout again. You'll probably find it takes you about the same amount of time to reach as it would for any other store - and they still shunt traffic off to the right, where available - though some additional designs were to be tested. It's actually not too difficult to shut a store down for a two week span and re-do the layout. Properly done, they can still keep the door open if it's not a huge remodel.

As I said, I don't know the newest metrics or what's changed in the design phase which is why I asked for a citation. I also don't know what Publix has done but I am curious. There's one of the "newer" model stores, a good size store, just across the bridge into Panama City Beach. It's down on the left - like you're headed out to the golf courses and State Park. If you get curious and are in the area, check that one out. They used the above mention model - where you can see stuff but still need to walk around to get it. Hint: You're meant to be distracted by the pretty colors and then the smell that hits with the bakery which should be on the right as I recall. There's probably a big barrier between you as you go to the right, that's there for a reason.

Causes cancer

[Citizen of Earth]

What does it do for me if I'm not an obese child? Or, should we file this in the "causes cancer" circular filing cabinet?

Re:Causes cancer

[fwarren]

The Warburg Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Cancer loves sugar. Cancer cells consume sugar at 8 times the rate of normal cells. Warburg won the Nobel prize for this discovery.

Yes both sugar and flour are bad for you. There is thing called "Diseases of Western Civilization" and they come along when sugar and flour start showing up in your diet.

Re:Causes cancer

[jedidiah]

Since flour and sugar pretty much coincide with civilization in general and the ability to record anything, the idea that "disease suddenly appears" is a pretty obvious thing. Whether or not it's anything to get hysterical about is another matter.

It still beats the alternative.

Re: Causes cancer

[bill_mcgonigle]

I eliminated sugar, wheat, caffeine, and dairy. I lost 80lbs, cut my risk of heart disease by more than half (per blood labs) and my hair started to grow back (vitamins and meditation help to a lesser degree). I was able to start running and lifiting and the ladies are way interested. But go ahead and munch on Doritos and Mt. Dew if you prefer - a goatee should compensate.

Oh, and I have literally hundreds of delicious dishes I can make without doing any foraging. Just shop the outer perimeter of the grocery store and experience real food.

Re: Causes cancer

[Gavagai80]

You got two years younger while writing the post. Impressive.

Mental health benefits as well

[Zargg]

My fiance has cut sugar out of her diet and found that her general mood is much happier and more consistent. After a day of eating sugar she would be really depressed and down, low energy and such, but now she has more physical and mental energy on a normal basis. That sugar crash really is killer!

We've already known this for over 40 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

For over a decade now, Dr. Eades clinic has done years of diet research with their patients and have been able to reduce and even eliminate in many cases Type II diabetes with mere diet change. (tl;dr; paleo-ish). They've done bloodwork on thousands of patients and have shown that in as little as two weeks and even sometimes less, switching to their recommended diet allowed nearly all blood markers to return to within normal, healthy ranges, including cholesterol.

Yudkin's book "Pure, White, and Deadly" was published in 1972 advising from the then already-currently-known-studies how dangerous sugar was in the human diet--and this was *before* sugar consumption in the West increased 5-10-fold, and before the advent of the even-worse HFCS experiment on the entire population began.

The body is a remarkably self-regulating and healing machine. It's amazing we can survive for as long as we do with continued toxin intake (and even the chronic effects for the vast majority are manageable)--and yet not surprising to me in the least that the body can return itself to a much healthier state so quickly after the toxins cease to be ingested. Our bodies want, really badly, to regulate into a healthy state.

Getting people to understand that our modern diet consists of slowly poisoning ourselves is the real battle to fight.

Thanks for the Diabetes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can confirm. Have dropped 90 percent of sugar & carbohydrates (Grains, Rice, Potatoes) from my diet, as a result of having been diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. Too late to recover Pancreas, however attendant diseases (Eye damage, kidney damage, Gout & arthritis are no longer giving me grief. I am down to one cold or less per Canadian winter, and my weight drops about a kg (2.2 lb) per month. Almost down to normal BMI.

Yes, it is also a genetic predisposition, but if I had known what not to eat 40 years ago, I might still have a pancreas.

Time to revise the food guide. Grain & Cane are not food for people.

Re:Let me get this straight:

[SirSlud]

We're now not supposed to eat meat of any kind

If you want to misrepresent what was said, that's your prerogative. The WHO didn't recommend not eating meat, only not to eat processed/smoked meats, and to limit red meat. As usual, the concept of moderation goes *woosh* over people's heads as they furiously go about constructing their strawmen ..

Wow

[tomhath]

They must be *really* fat if they're taking up both 2nd and 3rd place.

Eliminating sugar makes you angry

[trout007]

I gave up sugar and I became very angry as I went through what can only be described as withdrawal symptoms. Eventually I started eating again after a few months. I noticed almost everything we eat is super sweet. Fruit tastes like candy and soda was not palatable. Health benefits was everything mentioned except LDL which stayed high. Still a fun experiment.

Re:and so therefore?

[jedidiah]

...or they could just stop subsidizing sugar production.

Re:Let me get this straight:

[jedidiah]

What you are describing is not "moderation", especially the part that includes "not to eat".

Re:School Lunch

[codeAlDente]

I'm with you dude. Refined sugar is a drug and schools are the pushers. My kids school hands out sugary crap like candy, but they'd be pissed if I showed up and passed out similarly harmful drugs.

Re:Let me get this straight:

[moeinvt]

"Fat is OK... just not animal fat... vegetable fat is fine."

Completely backwards. Homo Sapiens evolved on a diet containing animal fat. The vegetable oils and especially the hydrogenated vegetable oils are heavily processed and totally unnatural. Factors such as shelf life, not human health drove the development of these substances. The fats that you actually find in nature such as animal fats and unsaturated fats from various seeds and nuts are much healthier than the processed stuff.

Re:Let me get this straight:

[Thelasko]

As usual, the concept of moderation goes *woosh* over people's heads as they furiously go about constructing their strawmen.

Except these stories never seem to focus on moderation. They focus on "cutting". You can't cut everything, you will starve. However, it seems our society has rejected moderation as something viable.

My personal opinion is, eating will kill you. Not eating will kill you faster. We're all going to die at some point. Eat just enough of whatever you want so you don't starve. Don't eat more than that.

Small Details Matter - Consider the study group.

[pubwvj]

"reducing sugar intake in obese children"

Small Details Matter - Consider the study group. They started out with abnormal people, the obese. Sugars are a normal part of our diet. The problem is not sugars but overconsumption.

Re:Let me get this straight:

[serviscope_minor]

The vegetable oils and especially the hydrogenated vegetable oils are heavily processed and totally unnatural.

No that's silly. Plain vegtable oil is entirely natural and unprocessed and exists to a greater ot lesser extent in a lot of vegetables, especially seeds. Lumping plain vegetable oil and hydrogenated vegetable oil together as "unnatural" is completely nonsensical.

You missed the point

[s.petry]

The point is that for at least 3 generations we were taught that Starches and sugars were not just healthy, but necessary in larger quantities. Average people didn't just make this shit up, it was taught in schools at the insistence of Governments (which we could argue is at the behest of large corporations, but that is a different discussion).

You should try less to look like a self righteous prick and much harder to comprehend a few sentences of text.