Obese Children’s Health Rapidly Improves After Reducing Sugar In Small Study

In a study released today, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and Touro University California said they were able to isolate the effects of sugar as opposed to just calories.

The study, published on Tuesday by the journal Obesity, substituted the sugar intake of 43 obese children with starch and claims to have demonstrated sugar is unsafe not because of its calories but because of the strain it places on the body’s metabolism. Baseline fasting blood levels, blood pressure, and glucose tolerance were assessed before the new menu plan was adopted. “This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful not because of its calories or its effects on weight. Rather, sugar is metabolically harmful because it’s sugar”.

A few researchers said that because the study didn’t have a control group of children, the changes in the health of the children studied can’t be fully linked to a reduction in sugar intake.

“It’s an important study that adds to the weight of evidence, and really calls out for us to examine the fact that eating patterns, and what a healthy eating pattern is for the American public, are as important as total caloric intake”, said Mechanick, who is president-elect of the American College of Endocrinology and a past president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

According to the researchers, after nine days, the children’s health improved, with better blood pressure scores and lower insulin and cholesterol levels. To Lustig, this is definitive proof that sugar causes metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of metabolic risk factors that raises a person’s risk for developing heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and more.

But sugar-packed cereals, pastries, and yogurt were banned.

The food choices were created to be “kid’s food” so included turkey hot dogs, crisps and pizzas all available in supermarkets.

The children still consumed the same number of calories from carbohydrate as before, but total dietary sugar was reduced from 28% to 10% and fructose from 12% to 4% of total calories.

Children were given a scale and told to weigh themselves everyday, with the goal of weight stability, not weight loss.

After just 9 days on the sugar-restricted diet, virtually every aspect of the participants’ metabolic health improved, without change in weight. Diastolic blood pressure decreased by 5mm, triglycerides by 33 points, LDL-cholesterol (known as the “bad” cholesterol) by 10 points, and liver function tests improved.

Fasting blood glucose went down by five points, and insulin levels were cut by one-third, the study found.

Dr Lustig says his study was careful to avoid this: researchers ensured the children participating in the study maintained the same weight and were encouraged to eat more if researchers saw their weight falling. “We didn’t completely reverse it, but within 10 days we went a very long way in reversing their metabolic dysfunction, with no change in calories and no change in weight”.

It said studies continue to show that “sugar in itself has no specific causal role in obesity”.