BackIs sugar the new tobacco?
Early exposure to a high sugar percentage in food can shape future taste. This bad habit should be nipped in the bud and children should be discouraged from having sugar
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Obesity is a worldwide epidemic today, prevalent not just among the rich but also the poor. For the longest time obesity has been thought to develop when the total daily intake of dietary calories exceeds the total daily calorie expenditure. Insufficient physical activity and excessive food intake are considered major culprits.
So it has been thought the solution is simply to lose excess body weight by eating less and increasing physical activity. As Prof. Timothy Noakes highlighted in his book Challenging Beliefs: Memoirs of a Career, this model makes certain predictions that are universally accepted—that those who are obese are both lazy and greedy. So when doctors see an obese patient who then happens to have diabetes, knee or back pain, they end up blaming the victim. In some public healthcare sectors like the UK’s National Health Service, patients are even asked to lose weight before being operated on.
This thought process is an oversimplification for the biggest health problem our generation faces. It isn’t a problem that happens simply because of the number of calories consumed—it also depends on where that “energy" comes from.
It was in 1972 that English nutritional scientist John Yudkin, in his book Pure, White And Deadly—How Sugar Is Killing Us And What We Can Do To Stop It, noted that the exponential increase in the incidence of diabetes in the US and UK exactly matched the rise in sugar consumption.
A panel of experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) analysed about 9,000 studies before coming up with the new guidelines for food intake. It was found that when more than 10% of the total daily calories were from “free sugar", it correlated with higher tooth decay, but there was complete absence of tooth decay when the calorie intake from sugar was reduced to 5%. Free sugar includes monosaccharides, the most basic units of carbohydrates; disaccharides, which are table sugar and milk sugar; and other sugars added by manufacturers, cooks and consumers to food, as well as sugars that are naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit concentrates. This does not include intrinsic sugars that are present in fruits and vegetables. The guidelines were released on 5 March on WHO’s website.
In recent years, experts have gone to the extent of calling sugar a “slow poison". At a press conference this month, Francesco Branca, director of nutrition for health and development, WHO, recommended halving the earlier recommendation for daily calories as “free sugar" from 10% to 5%, i.e. from 50g to 25g of sugar a day.
So for an average body-weight adult, if the daily calorie intake is 2,000, 10% would be 200 calories and 5% would be 100 calories. Since each gram of sugar is four calories, it’ll be 50g for 100 calories and 25g for 50 calories.
An average-sized bowl of cereal is likely to have approximately 14g of sugar. A tablespoon of tomato ketchup has 7g of sugar and sweetened yogurt, 6g. A sweet beverage on an average contains 35g of sugar.
WHO appreciates that even though 5% would be ideal, it is wishful thinking. So it’s being termed a “conditional" recommendation; 25g of sugar daily would be very difficult in today’s world where sugar or its replacement, high-fructose corn syrup, are used in almost all foods and juices. The previous recommendation of 10% is more realistic, so it’s being termed a “strong" recommendation.
Just a day before the release of the WHO guidelines, the chief medical officer of England said sugar could be addictive and advised the British government to introduce a tax on it. There is no definite proof, but current medical literature suggests that early exposure to a high sugar percentage in food can shape future taste. The suggestion is that this bad habit should be nipped in the bud and children should be discouraged from having sugar.
It might be a good idea to replace vending machines in schools and office spaces that have sugary beverages with water fountains.
In India, during festivals or celebratory occasions, many people binge on sweets of various kinds. If you refuse sweets, your hosts could get offended. Maybe it’s time for us to show our hospitality and love in some other way.
Rajat Chauhan is an ultra marathon runner and a doctor specializing in sports and exercise medicine and musculoskeletal medicine, and founder of Back 2 Fitness. He is also associate editor, British Journal of Sports Medicine.
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