Childhood obesity improves rapidly with sugar reduction, study finds

The fascinating experiment, which swapped out added sugar in children’s diets for starchy foods – in effect, swapping fructose for glucose – hammers another nail into the coffin of the phrase, “a calorie is a calorie”, the researchers claim.

Researchers sought to find whether the cumulative results of metabolic disease could be blamed on obesity, calories or something else in the diet, finding that restricting sugar among children but maintaining their normal daily caloric intake reduced symptoms of metabolic disease and even resulted in weight loss.

Lead author, Dr Robert Lustig, said: “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”.

“This internally controlled intervention study is a solid indication that sugar contributes to metabolic syndrome, and is the strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity”.

The study was published online Tuesday in the journal Obesity. 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.

In order to reach the findings, the researchers observed around 43 children between the age of 9 and 18 who were overweight or obese and had at least one chronic metabolic disorder like hypertension. Children reported feeling fuller when they ate less sugar, and showed improvements to almost all measures of metabolic health over the course of the study. Practically, this meant swaps like bagels for pastries, baked potato chips for yogurt, and turkey hot dogs for chicken teriyaki.

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.

The study participants underwent extensive testing that included everything from basic blood pressure measures and cholesterol counts to oral glucose tolerance tests and sophisticated bone density scans. 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.

However, critics of the study say that the sugar-free diet worked so well that the children lost too much weight, muddling any conclusions about why their health took a turn for the better. “Also, when people are losing weight, even if modest, their metabolic changes can seem larger than they actually are – one needs to see results once folk return to their habitual state after they’ve finished losing weight”.

Despite the short period of time and a diet still heavy on processed food, the researchers said they found striking results.

“Where those calories come from determines where in the body they go”. “From a clinical standpoint, from a health care standpoint, that’s very important”.

Dr. Sonia Caprio, a professor of pediatrics at Yale Medical School also told the paper that “It addressed the issue in an original way and tried to isolate the effect of sugar on metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance…”