Initiative Links ‘Sugar Science’ to Your Health

These days, sugar is pretty close to everywhere in the American diet. You probably know that too much sugar is probably not great for your health.

Now, a new initiative from UC San Francisco is spelling out the health dangers in clear terms. The  project is called “sugar science,” and science there is.

A team of researchers distilled 8,000 studies and research papers, and found strong evidence showing overconsumption of added sugar overloads vital organs and contributes to three major chronic illnesses: heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and liver disease.

While there are no federal guidelines recommending a limit on sugar consumption, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends cutting our consumption way down. Right now, the average American consumes the equivalent of 19.5 teaspoons a day in added sugars. The AHA says men should cut that down to no more than 9 teaspoons and women should consume less than 6 teaspoons.

But knowing how much sugar you’re eating can be challenging. Some key facts on the Sugar Science website are these:

• Added sugar is hiding in 74 percent of packaged foods. (Proposed changes to the nutrition label would change this by including a separate line for added sugars.)
• A common type of sugar can damage your liver — just like too much alcohol.
• One 12-ounce can of soda a day can increase your risk of dying of heart disease by one-third.

The site also includes tips on concrete steps that people can take to cut down on sugar. The most straightforward way to cut down on sugar is to stop drinking sugar-sweetened drinks, like sodas, sports drinks and energy drinks, the researchers say. More than one-third of added sugar in the diet comes from sugary drinks. They also recommend reading nutrition labels. While there are 61 different names for sugar on ingredients labels, the UCSF team says that “if the chemical name has an ‘ose’ at the end—as in dextrose, fructose, lactose —- it’s likely to be added sugar.”

Diabetes as the AIDS Crisis of This Generation

“I feel like we are with diabetes where we were in 1990 with the AIDS epidemic,” Schillinger said. “The ward is overwhelmed with diabetes –- they’re getting their limbs amputated, they’re on dialysis. And these are young people. They are suffering the ravages of diabetes in the prime of their life.”

But unlike AIDS, where activists pushed hard for action from researchers and governments, there’s little activist response for diabetes “because it affects low-income communities disproportionately,” Schillinger said. “We’re at the point where we need a public health response to it.”