Sugar. So sweet yet… so controversial. The health implications of sugar are controversial. Some sugar critics consider it no better than a slow poison, like smoking. Some respected researchers (by respected researchers, I mean they’re independent and not in the industry’s back pocket) say the fear and criticisms are unfounded.

Sugar for purpose of this discussion is refined sugar. Sucrose. The stuff in the sugar bowl. We’re not talking about complex carbohydrates, which are merely long strings of sugars. We’re specifically talking about the kind of sugar you may put in your coffee or find on the label of your candy bar.

Sugar’s enemies say it causes all sorts of physical problems, and even emotional problems. They claim sugar contributes to glucose intolerance, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, hypertension, coronary artery disease, behavior changes in both children and adults, problems in the central nervous system, obesity, increased likelihood of developing gallstones, lower bioavailability of vitamins and minerals, dietary deficiencies, cavities and even cancer.

The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition had a Sugar Task Force look into these claims. The task force reviewed the scientific research they reviewed supported only one of these claims, the one linking refined sugar to cavities. Their overall finding was that there is no conclusive evidence that sugar is a public health hazard at the levels at which it is currently consumed.

Nonetheless, there is enough preliminary evidence to suggest that may indeed be a contributing factor to obesity (which in turn has the knock-on effect of contributing to the risk of glucose intolerance and diabetes). Studies also suggest that sugar may lessen the likelihood of getting a balanced diet by replacing more nutritious foods with high-intensity empty calories. Diet imbalance brings with it its own set of knock-on effects, such as insufficient intake of micronutrients like chromium, increase blood triglyceride (fat) and cholesterol (increasing the risk of coronary artery disease).

So there’s the downside. What’s the upside of sugar consumption? Calories and… more calories. That’s it. Beyond calories, sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever beyond its calories. Foods that offer concentrated calories but no other nutritional benefits—no vitamins, no minerals, no fiber, nothing—are quite rightly said to consist of empty calories.

If you consume too many empty calories one of two things is likely to happen: you’ll stick to your appropriate calorie intake and risk not getting all the other nutrients you need, or you’ll increase your calorie intake and eat enough to meet your other nutritional needs. And guess what? Eating more calories than your body needs for its given level of activity gets you fat.

Sugar, while not the dire poison some of its critics make it out to be, has no nutritional upside either. In light of the absence of any nutritional value, it’s reasonable to decrease one’s sugar consumption. But how? Cutting down on sugar is not so easy as avoiding adding sugar to your meals yourself, or using a sugar substitute in your coffee in the morning. Many, many products contain far more sugar than you might realize. The solution, or at least the start of it? Read labels.

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1. Greg
   August 27, 2008
   

   Thanks for debunking some of the myths but also being honest about sugar. Question I have is that I read in a fitness magazine that sugar is extremely addictive. Have you seen any research about that?

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