During the past decade, the number of kids who are overweight has more than doubled in this country. It’s a statistic that is growing and one of great concern to the nation’s health experts.
Sugar, especially in the form of soda pop, is often fingered as a major culprit for this predicament. But how much can we really blame sugary foods and beverages for the ballooning weight of our kids?
Most of the debate over sugar these days is about added sugars, not the naturally occurring sugars in foods, such as the lactose in milk or the fructose in fruit.
Added sugars are put into foods to enhance taste, texture or structure. One example in the home is sucrose, or table sugar, added to a cake. An industrial example is high-fructose corn syrup, one of the principal sweeteners of soda pop. Soda has become a particular concern for health professionals because of the amounts that young people drink.
While supporters of the sugar industry and anti-sugar activists cite study after study to support their positions, the jury is still out on the exact role high-sugar foods and beverages play in obesity. One thing is not disputed, though: Consuming too many calories and not exercising enough are the primary reasons that people gain weight. Sugar consumption is but one small piece of the huge puzzle of obesity.
Sugar is sugar, isn’t it?
Because the body digests natural and added sugars the same way, many experts argue that it doesn’t make sense to distinguish one type of sugar from another.
That’s true as far as the biochemistry of sugar is concerned, says Rachel Johnson, an associate professor and assistant dean at the University of Vermont and a member of the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. But the real issue is that foods high in added sugar tend to be low in other nutrients.
“The nutrient density of a food that contains natural sugars is far superior to the empty calories supplied by foods like soda, cookies or candy,” Johnson says.
“Lots of soda means lots of sugars means lots of calories,” says Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group in Washington, D.C.
A FDA study published earlier this year revealed that non-diet soft drinks are the greatest source of added sugars in the American diet, accounting for one-third of the average person’s intake of added sugars. Annual per capita soda consumption has increased to 41 gallons in 1997 from 22 gallons in 1970.
One 12-ounce can of soda contains the equivalent of 9 teaspoons of sugaror 135 calories. Boys ages 12 to 19 get about 15 teaspoons of added sugar a day from soda; that’s 44 percent of their consumption of added sugar. Girls don’t fare much better: Forty percent (or 10 teaspoons) of their 24 teaspoons of sugar come from soda.
Also alarming is that 20 percent of 1- and 2-year-old children consume soft drinksnearly 1 cup per day, according to food consumption surveys. And almost half of all children ages 6 to 11 drink almost 2 cups of soda per day.
As soda consumption has grown, the size of its containers has kept pace, or even contributed to the increase. What people regard as a single serving has swelled from the now-tiny-looking 6.5-ounce bottle of the 1950s to the standard 12-ounce can to the 20-ounce bottle, on up to bucket-like fountain drinks such as the 64-ounce Big Gulp, which provides the equivalent of 48 teaspoons of sugar.
Link to obesity
Sugary foods and beverages do not cause obesityno single food does. Although it sounds simplistic, obesity is a consequence of eating too many calories and expending too few. If you eat more calories than your body needs, you’ll gain weight, whether you get those extra calories from Dr. Pepper or steamed tofu.
Everyone agrees that there is no direct scientific link between sugar and obesity. In fact, in 1997, the World Health Organization exonerated sugar as a cause of any disease, including obesity.
At least at this stage, the trend toward higher sugar intake and the increased rates of obesity mainly seems to be a matter of coincidence.
The science linking sugary foods and childhood obesity is tentative and often contradictory. For example, one study at the Centers for Disease Control reported that soft drinks provide more calories to overweight youths than to lean kids. But other research challenges that.
“It’s an urban myth that kids who are overweight drink substantially more soft drinks than kids of normal weight,” says Maureen Storey of the Georgetown University Center for Food and Nutrition Policy. Her study shows that overweight kids drink just 1 cup more soda.
In a separate study she conducted among children ages 6 to 11, Storey found that the strongest predictors for obesity were those that cannot be controlledage, gender and race. Among all of the lifestyle factors reviewed, the only one that was linked to an increased body mass index (a measure of weight in relation to height) was TV watching, which was more predictive than any dietary factor, including sugar consumption. In fact, she found the opposite of what many experts contend about sugar and obesity. Her data showed that the skinnier the kid, the more added sugars in his or her diet. (Storey’s research, not yet published, was funded by the sugar industry.)
Adds Theresa Nicklas, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor University in Texas, “The majority of the studies available looking at the relationship between obesity and sugar consumption are negative and, in fact, generally show that leaner individuals tend to have higher sugar intakes than overweight persons. Years of research dating back to the 1970s show this.”
Back to empty calories
Which leaves sugar opponents with the argument that sugary foods tend to replace nutrient-rich foods like fruits and vegetables and, in the case of beverages, milk, juice and plain old water.
Consumption data show that at the same time soft drink consumption skyrocketed, milk intake plummeted. Twenty years ago, boys drank twice as much milk as soda and girls drank 50 percent more milk than soda. Now, those numbers are reversed.
A recently published study by USDA nutritionist Shanthy Bowman found that sugary diets are the least nutritious diets. People who consumed more than 18 percent of their calories from added sugars did not get the servings of diverse foods recommended by the USDA Food Guide Pyramid. They also drank many beverages high in calories and didn’t get the recommended intake of many micronutrients, especially vitamin A, vitamin B12, folic acid, magnesium and iron.
Children especially were more likely to have a diet high in added sugars. The author concluded that “because of the increasing prevalence of obesity, consumers will be benefited by limiting intake of empty’ calories, especially during childhood and adolescence.”
But other experts bring out research showing that eating little sugar is no guarantee that individuals will meet dietary guidelines, and neither does a high sugar intake necessarily mean poor dietary quality. Baylor University’s Nicklas mentions two large dietary surveys that show no consistent associations between total sugar intake and nutrient adequacy. But that’s not so surprising: Those figures include natural sugars from nutrient-dense foods as well as from added sugars.
On the added-sugar front, Georgetown’s Storey says that “in one of my previous studies, diets high in added sugar were sometimes lower in certain vitamins and minerals, but the amounts were of no clinical significance. And in some cases, intake of certain vitamins and minerals even increased.”
Sugar recommendations
“Choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars.” After much argument with sugar industry representatives, that’s the official advice of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which were reissued at the end of May.
There are no official recommendations for the amount of sugar that’s OK to eat. The USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid provides suggestions based on calorie levels. According to the Food Guide Pyramid, people eating 1,600 calories per day should limit added sugar to less than 6 teaspoons per day. Those eating 2,200 calories should limit it to 12 teaspoons and those eating 2,800 calories, to no more than 18 teaspoons.
WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?
If you want to limit the amount of added sugar in your child’s diet:
– Don’t succumb to the habit of serving soft drinks with meals. Soda is fine for special occasions but it shouldn’t be an everyday beverage. Offer beverages such as skim milk, orange juice and seltzer water.
– Be a good role model. You can’t expect your kids to eat fruit as a snack or drink milk with their dinner if you won’t.
– Keep fruits and vegetables handy for snacks so kids reach for them instead of cookies, candy, cakes and other sweets.
– Moderation is key. All foods can fit into a healthy diet and that includes sugary foods and beverages, as long as they don’t replace foods in the diet that provide vitamins and minerals.
