Kellogg's Covers Up Health Crisis in Sugar

While I admit that I have not eaten Kellogg's cereals for over 50 years, this article about Kellogg was not a total surprise as they have been exposed before by sponsoring foods and having the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) promote some of their foods as healthy.

While Kellogg's is the world's leading cereal manufacturer, it has spent millions on research to counter claims that its sugar-laden products are fueling the obesity crisis.

Kellogg’s has been attacked for putting more sugar in some breakfast cereals than is found in cakes, donuts and ice cream. A bowl of Crunchy Nut cereal can contain more than half the recommended maximum intake of added sugar for a six-year-old.

Now an investigation has established that Kellogg’s helped fund a report, published in a medical journal in December, attacking the British government’s recommendations to cut sugar intake. It also funded studies suggesting eating cereals may help children stay at a healthy weight.

Simon Capewell, a founder of Action on Sugar and professor in public health and policy at Britain’s Liverpool University, called on Kellogg’s to publish a list of the scientists and research organizations to which it pays fees and research grants. Coca-Cola published such a list in 2015 after a row over how its research funding influenced public health debate.

“They are funding scientists and organizations to undermine the established evidence that eating too much sugar is harmful,” Professor Capewell said.

One of the food-research organizations funded by Kellogg’s is the International Life Sciences Institute. Last year it funded­ research in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine that said the advice to cut sugar by Public Health England and other bodies such as the World Health Organization could not be trusted.

The study, which claimed official guidance to cut sugar was based on “low-quality evidence”, stated it had been funded by an ILSI technical committee. Only by searching elsewhere for a list of committee members did it become clear that this comprised 15 food firms, including Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola and Tate & Lyle.

In 2013, Kellogg’s funded British research that concluded “regular consumption of breakfast cereals” might help children stay slimmer.
The study, published in the journal Obesity Facts, relied on evidence from 14 studies. Seven were funded by Kellogg’s and five were funded by the cereal company General Mills. Margaret Ashwell, a consultant to the food industry and one of the auth­ors of the study, said all interests had been correctly disclosed.

Terence Kealey, a former vice-chancellor at Buckingham University and author of Breakfast Is a Dangerous Meal, warned last month that the scientific community had “fooled itself” about the benefits of breakfast.

Kellogg has said it was committed to “slowly reducing sugar”. A spokesperson said: “As a low-calorie, grain-based food choice we believe cereals have a role to play in tackling obesity. We follow appropriate guidelines for transparency and disclosure.”

If only this were, correct!

Dietary Sugar Guidelines Based on Low Quality Evidence

Nutritional guidelines restricting sugar intake are not based on high quality science, finds new study led by McMaster University and the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). The paper is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The research team conducted a systematic review of nine public health guidelines on sugar recommendations, including those by the influential U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the World Health Organization (WHO) and found that the recommendations for limiting sugar are based on low to very low quality evidence.

"Although our findings question the recommendations from guidelines produced by leading authorities, the findings should not be used to justify high or increased consumption of nutrient-poor, energy-dense foods and beverages like candy and sugar-sweetened beverages," says Bradley Johnston, principal investigator of the review. Limited sugar consumption still advisable.

"We know that it is healthy and advisable to limit our sugar intake, the question remains to what degree, and if we are limiting our sugar intake what are we replacing the sugar with?"

Official caps on sugars vary widely, from less than five per cent of total daily calories, as recommended by the WHO, to advice from the Institute of Medicine, which suggests the public to limit sugars to less than 25 per cent of total daily calories.

"When respected organizations issue conflicting recommendations it can result in public confusion, and this raises concerns about the quality of the guidelines, and the quality of the evidence that informed the guidelines," says Johnston. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University; an assistant professor of health policy, management and evaluation at the University of Toronto; and scientist in Child Health Evaluative Sciences at SickKids.

Johnston uses former "low-fat" guidelines as an example: "For 40 years it was advised to eat a low fat diet and, as a result, the food industry and the public looked for ways to lower fat content in foods. What happened is that the fat was typically replaced by simple carbohydrates, which included sugar creating a less than optimal outcome including an associated rise in obesity and diabetes.

"In the case of lowering sugar intake, what is happening is that sugars are often replaced with starches and other food additives like maltodextrine, providing the same calorie count, but often accompanied by an increased glycemic index (and blood glucose levels)."

The research team identified problems with the nutritional guidelines and in particular problems with the research that supported the guidelines' recommendations such as; the inclusion of imprecise or small studies; a high risk of bias from uncontrolled studies; the use of outcome measures such as "nutrient displacement, tooth decay and limited weight gain" that are of lower priority to the public, compared to arguably more important outcomes such as obesity and diabetes; a lack of transparency regarding financial conflicts of interest among groups members who developed the guidelines, and a failure to include patient and public representatives in the panels drawing up the guidelines.

Co-first author, Behnam Sadeghirad, a McMaster PhD student in health research methodology, said, "At present, there does not appear to be reliable evidence indicating that any of the recommended daily caloric thresholds for sugar intake are strongly associated with negative health effects. The results from this review should be used to promote improvement in the development of trustworthy guidelines on sugar intake."

Sugar, Not Fat Is the Cause of Obesity – Part 2

Some history is in order. In 1980, the US Government issued its first Dietary Guidelines without any scientific evidence, only the say-so of “experts.” The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them; food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.

The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. Instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.

Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates at this source (and about two thirds of the way down the page) and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an airplane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000. In the UK, the line is flat for decades until the mid-1980s, at which point it also turns towards the sky. Only 6% of Britons were obese in 1980. In the next 20 years that figure more than trebled. Today, two thirds of Britons are either obese or overweight, making this the fattest country in the EU. Type 2 diabetes, closely related to obesity, has risen in tandem in both countries.

At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worst, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe. Naturally, then, a search for culprits has ensued. Scientists are conventionally apolitical figures, but these days, nutrition researchers write editorials and books that resemble liberal activist tracts, fizzing with righteous denunciations of “big sugar” and fast food. Nobody could have predicted, it is said, how the food manufacturers would respond to the injunction against fat – selling us low-fat yogurts bulked up with sugar, and cakes infused with liver-corroding transfats.

Nutrition scientists are angry with the press for distorting their findings, politicians for failing to heed them, and the rest of us for overeating and under-exercising. In short, everyone, business, media, politicians, consumers – is to blame. Everyone, that is, except scientists.

But, it was not impossible to foresee that the vilification of fat might be an error. Energy from food comes to us in three forms: fat, carbohydrate, and protein. Since the proportion of energy we get from protein tends to stay stable, whatever our diet, a low-fat diet effectively means a high-carbohydrate diet. The most versatile and palatable carbohydrate is sugar, which John Yudkin had already circled in red. In 1974, the UK medical journal, the Lancet, sounded a warning about the possible consequences of recommending reductions in dietary fat: “The cure should not be worse than the disease.”

I would suggest reading the rest of the long article as I can only make a mess of it and I think you would be better served reading it yourself.

Sugar, Not Fat Is the Cause of Obesity – Part 1

This article really tied together some of my thoughts about sugar and its effects on our bodies. Six names that are behind this are Robert Lustig, John Yudkin, Dr Paul Dudley White, Ancel Keys, Gary Taubes, and Nina Teicholz. There are several others mentioned, but I admit I am not familiar with them.

Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specializes in the treatment of childhood obesity. A 90-minute talk he gave in 2009, titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has now been viewed more than six million times on YouTube. In it, Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in modern diets, is a “poison” culpable for America’s obesity epidemic.

A year or so before the video was posted; Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia. Afterwards, a scientist in the audience approached him. Surely, the man said, you’ve read Yudkin. Lustig shook his head. John Yudkin, said the scientist, was a British professor of nutrition who had sounded the alarm on sugar back in 1972, in a book called Pure, White, and Deadly.

“If only a small fraction of what we know about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive,” wrote Yudkin, “that material would promptly be banned.” The book did well, but Yudkin paid a high price for it. Prominent nutritionists combined with the food industry to destroy his reputation, and his career never recovered. He died, in 1995, a disappointed, largely forgotten man.

Perhaps the Australian scientist intended a friendly warning. Lustig was certainly putting his academic reputation at risk when he embarked on a high-profile campaign against sugar. But, unlike Yudkin, Lustig is backed by a prevailing wind. We read almost every week of new research into the deleterious effects of sugar on our bodies. In the US, the latest edition of the government’s official dietary guidelines includes a cap on sugar consumption. In the UK, the chancellor George Osborne has announced a new tax on sugary drinks. Sugar has become dietary enemy number one.

This represents a dramatic shift in priority. For at least the last three decades, the dietary arch-villain has been saturated fat. When Yudkin was conducting his research into the effects of sugar, in the 1960s, a new nutritional orthodoxy was in the process of asserting itself. Its central tenet was that a healthy diet is a low-fat diet. Yudkin led a diminishing band of dissenters who believed that sugar, not fat, was the more likely cause of maladies such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes. But by the time he wrote his book, the commanding heights of the field had been seized by proponents of the fat hypothesis. Yudkin found himself fighting a rearguard action, and he was defeated.

Not just defeated, in fact, but buried. When Lustig returned to California, he searched for Pure, White and Deadly in bookstores and online, to no avail. Eventually, he tracked down a copy after submitting a request to his university library. On reading Yudkin’s introduction, he felt a shock of recognition.

“Holy crap,” Lustig thought. “This guy got there 35 years before me.”

Big Sugar Suing Big Corn Over Name Change

This is one battle where I hope the Sugar Industries win. Yes, as a person with type 2 diabetes, both are not good for us, but what the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) is trying to convince the US Department of Agriculture to allow needs to be stopped.

The CRA wants to change the name from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to corn sugar. If I was them, I would like to get rid of a product name that has garnered such a bad image. However, with people being aware of this change, if they are successful the bad image should remain. I know that I will not stop my attitude because of a name change. I do live in a large corn producing state and grew up on a farm, but I do not appreciate what the corn organizations are doing to attempt to cover up a product that is so damaging to the health of our country.

Consumers are doing the right thing by avoiding the product and not purchasing food products containing HFCS. Sugar had the same molecules as HFCS, Sucrose (aka, table sugar) contains one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose, which are bound together chemically. HFCS also contains one molecule of each, but they are not bound together chemically.

“Unlike its cousin sucrose, when we ingest fructose, it is directed toward the liver. It does not go through some of the critical intermediary breakdown steps that sucrose does. For years nobody knew what this meant, but eventually cell biologists figured out that fructose was being used in the liver as a building block of triglycerides. Being overwhelmed by an excess of fatty acids, the liver releases them into the bloodstream. Muscles find themselves bombarded by these fats and they develop insulin resistance.”

The above is what the Corn Growers Association and the Corn Refiners Association do not want you to know. "Whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar," one ad says. Reading the quote from above shows the difference and how dangerous HFCS is to our health. We need to be relentless in our opposition regardless how they try to camouflage it.

I am surprised at a statement by author Andrew Weill when he states that the corn product “is a marker for low quality food and has no place in a healthy diet.” He is correct, but this also is a marketing ploy to confuse consumers as well. Either way, this argument will be aired in court, and hopefully the Corn Refiners Association will not succeed.

For more information read the following from Yahoo News, my previous blogs here and here. Also read thisblogger and the information from the two websites of the Corn Refiners Association here and here. For a very controversial study read this press release here in Medscape. The advertisements big sugar is referring to can be viewed here. And I need to thank Scott Strumello, who alerted me to this on Dec 19.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Not The Same As Sugar

According to the National Corn Growers and their web site http://www.cornsugar.com/, sugar is sugar. They have petitioned the USDA for a name change from high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to corn sugar which to date has not been granted. The sugar industry is considering a law suit to prevent the change and you may read about this here.

Sucrose (aka, table sugar) contains one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose, which are bound chemically. HFCS also contains one molecule of each, but they are not bound together chemically. HFCS is also used in more foods than sugar would ever be used. This is the primary reason many of us with type 2 diabetes try to avoid it at all costs. This means that we avoid most highly processed foods because it has been added, whereas sugar itself, often would not have been added. True, some processed foods do add sugar, but not as often or in the quantity of HFCS.

I still detest the ads the corn industry uses promoting HFCS when they say sugar is sugar. Although the corn industry claims this they are wrong as pointed out above. Sucrose must go through several intermediary steps to be broken into separate molecules of fructose and glucose. The fructose in HFCS does not need these steps and heads directly for the liver where is starts being used in the liver as a building block of triglycerides.

Because the liver is flooded by an excess of fatty acids, the liver releases them into the bloodstream. Now the muscles find themselves facing an overdose of these fats and the cells develop insulin resistance. With the increase insulin resistance comes an increase in visceral adiposity in overweight/obese adults. Not a pretty picture about what HFCS does to us.

Read what the corn industry does not want you to know here. More information on HFCS can be read here, and about fructose from fruit here.