Too much sugar makes you fat and sick

Increased disease risk due to sugar

04/02/2014

There is too much sugar in our food. Doctors have warned for a long time that sugar makes you fat, sick and addicted. But who actually blames it? Is it the industry that already mixes sugar into baby foods, or consumers who like to buy sweets. An extensive US study has demonstrated an immediate increased risk of fatal heart disease as a result of increased sugar intake in society.

That too much sugar intake can lead to obesity, dental diseases or diabetes, with all its negative health consequences such as eye diseases, kidney damage and damage to the nerve cells has been proven in previous studies. The study found that one in ten Americans consume more than a quarter of their daily sugar diet. The scientists from the health authority CDC published their findings in the journal „JAMA Internal Medicine“. This was the first large-scale national study on the subject, analyzing the data from national health surveys of more than 30,000 Americans from 1988 to 2010. These were mainly questions about the diet.

For the evaluation of the data, the researchers divided the participants into five categories, whereby the mass of the sugar consumption represented the criterion for the classification. The lowest level included those who covered less than 10 percent of their daily calorie needs for sugar. In the last group, people were in daily food with a sugar content of more than 25 percent. According to the study, they found that the risk of fatal heart disease was three times higher than that of people who consumed only a small amount of fortified foods.

Two doses of cola per day increase the risk
For a person who consumes 2000 calories a day, the risk increases significantly if there are two doses of lemonade or cola. "Too much sugar not only makes us fat, it can also make us ill," wrote Laura Schmidt, a health policy expert at the University of California. With a daily intake of 2000 calories, therefore, the risk significantly increases if two doses of lemonade or coke are included. Age, gender and ethnicity did not play a crucial role in the relevance of the discovery.

„Most adults in the US consume more sugar than is recommended for a healthy diet. We observed a significant relationship between added sugar intake and the increased risk of CVD mortality“ so the scientists in a concluding conclusion about the results of the analysis of the data.

In Germany, we consume about 35 kilos of sugar per capita every year, even though our body does not need an extra gram of it, because carbohydrates from bread, pasta or rice provide enough energy for our daily activities. Our body is able to break down the carbohydrates in such a way that grape sugar is produced. The consumption of sugar has almost tripled in recent decades, according to the data of the German Nutrition Society (DGE). (Fr)