Hi there!

Yesterday another food-related headline got a lot of attention:

http://time.com/4087775/sugar-is-definitely-toxic-a-new-study-says/

It is a well-known fact that children today suffer from diseases that, for long, had their onset only later in adulthood and were normally linked to an unhealthy diet (e.g. type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, dyslipidemia, hypertension, all of them part of the so-called metabolic syndrome). Most often, these diseases occur in obese children; often additionally depending on the ethnic group the children belong to.

The Western diet has often been cited as being responsible for changes for the worse in Middle Eastern/Asian countries.

The new study by Robert Lustig and colleagues has primarily investigated the effects of fructose. Fructose is one of the two parts of what we normally call “refined sugar”. In their study, fructose was replaced by the much more complex carbohydrate starch. Starch takes much longer than fructose to be broken down and metabolized, though in the end, it´s broken down to glucose, the other part of refined sugar. That means, the children were still fed sugar/carbohydrates, but in a much more complex form.

43 obese children were given this replacement-diet for 10 days, the most informative body parameters were measured before and after these 10 days (e.g. body mass index, heart rate, blood pressure, insulin, cholesterol etc.).

All children improved remarkably.

What are the consequences of this result?!

We could easily put it into one sentence: The more refined the sugar the more harm it does to the body.

Of course, it´s a little more complex than that. Here´s our summary:

• A heading like “Sugar is toxic” is misleading. The described effects depend on the type of sugar (refined versus un-(or lesser)refined) consumed. Even the most healthy diet includes sugar – but not refined sugar, it´s the natural sugars that are used in these diets.
• Only swapping fructose for other, more complex sugars and thereby still sticking to an overall unhealthy diet is merely of extremely small benefit.
• An early education and awareness about the negative health effects of refined sugars, refined carbohydrates, and also the hidden sugars (salad sauces, tomato ketchup, flavoured yoghurts, “healthy” drinks, sports drinks etc.) is of utmost importance. This knowledge will help individuals and families to avoid the potential health-threatening, industrially refined, sugars.

Keep calm and eat with self-respect and self-care, your knowledge will protect you

Here´s the link to the full text of the study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/epdf

Another study found that eating sweets with refined sugar causes the brain to form a memory – and, in the worst case, to demand more and more. Increased snacking is positively correlated with obesity. At the same time, obese people snack more frequently than those who aren´t obese.

Henderson YO, Nalloor R, Vazdarjanova A, Parent MB. Sweet orosensation induces Arc expression in dorsal hippocampal CA1 neurons in an experience-dependent manner. Hippocampus, Sep 19, 2015, doi: 10.1002/hipo.22532 [Epub ahead of print]

 

 

 

Hey guys!

Yesterday, there was a media storm about the newly released WHO report on the health risks of eating red and processed meat.

We´ve watched this media storm with interest, have downloaded and discussed this report in our team, and now we´d like to share some of our observations with you:

• Rather often, the information published in the media was too general and therefore misleading for the end-consumer (=you).
• Opinion making was unfortunately present, that is the data was not considered from a neutral point of view.
• The meat industry shrugged the report off as being of poor quality and absolutely biased.

What was this report truly about?!

• The scientists involved investigated the already published literature (=studies) that has dealt with the question if red or processed meat can cause cancer.
• They included only the best (=high quality) literature.
• It was differentiated between the intake of red meat (e.g. unprocessed mammalian muscle meat like beef, pork, veal, lamb etc., includes minced meat) and processed meat (cold cuts, smoked or cured meat, fermentated meat etc.).
• The largest body of data was found for associations of colorectal (= bowel) cancer and meat consumption. That means: NO generalization should be made that meat consumption can cause all types of cancer – this is completely wrong at the time being (but was used as a heading!)
• The consumption of processed meat holds a higher health risk than red meat, even (and already) in smaller portions per day (50g processed meat versus 100g red meat).
• For other cancers than colorectal cancer positive associations were found; that means meat-consuming people in the investigated population sample suffered more often from cancer than those who didn´t eat meat. But: An association is not the single cause of a disease! It is often often not even a cause in itself – but it contributes to the development of the disease (see also colorectal cancer)! Skipping the questionable food could therefore have remarkable and longlasting health benefits.
• The larger the available data, the more secure the result. As the researchers in charge dealt with a truly big amount of hard data, their result is reliable. That´s why they classified processed meat as a carcinogen, and placed it in the one group with arsenic and asbestos. Please keep in mind, that the link between colorectal cancer and the consumption of processed meat was the strongest, for others types of cancer these data might not be applicable.

Some general remarks: 

• 50g of processed meat is less than one sausage. The consumption of 50g per day increases the risk of colorectal (=bowel) cancer by almost a fifth.
• An association is normally not the single cause of a disease, but it is linked to it and has the potential to trigger it. Meat consumptiom shows several associations with the development of cancer – reversing this result means eliminating this regular intake will have remarkable health benefits!
• When reading the report carefully, the researchers appeared as unbiased as possible, they openly claimed any potential clash of interests, and the investigation was not funded by either side  of meat industry or cancer research organizations.
• The whole process of evaluating the data was observed by representatives of the meat industry.
• What is behind the meat industry´s claim that this report would be of poor quality? Probably money. It´s a giant industry and this behaviour is well-known from the tobacco industry. the categorization through the WHO is a serious threat to this industry.

What to do now?!

• Keep calm and eat with self-care and self-respect.
• Knowing about the data might make you think about your meat consumption. If you´re in the group who eats more than the treshold values of 50g for processed meat and 100g of red meat per day, it will be your very own risk. If you decide to lower your intake, there will be healths benefits waiting for you!
• If you belong  to the group of non-meat-eaters anyway: relax 😉

Here´s the link to the original report:

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf