Do Fructose-Containing Sugars Lead To Adverse Health Consequences?
I read the nutrition label on my can of Monster, “2 servings per can” I read to myself. “Holy shit that’s a lot of sugar,” I thought.
The information that sugar is bad for you seems to be common knowledge. Where did this belief come from? One of the first books on the dangers of sugar was in 1972 by Dr. John Yudkin, a professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of London. The book was called Pure, White and Deadly. In this book, Yudkin introduced the idea that sugar is dangerous. Yudkin stated that “if only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation in any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.” So, what does sugar actually do to …show more content…
This idea is also reaffirmed in the meta-analyses called Do Fructose-Containing Sugars Lead to Adverse Health Consequences? Results of Recent Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses by Vanessa Ha, Adrian I Cozma, Vivian LW Choo, Sonia Blanco Mejia, Russell J de Souza, and John L Sievenpiper. The same article also mentioned that “it is difficult to separate the contribution of fructose-containing sugars from that of other factors in the epidemic of obesity…” (Ha, Cozma, Choo, Mejia, Souza, and Sievenpiper) These studies suggest that since there have been a spike in both obesity and sugar consumption, there is a correlation. However, we do not know for sure that one causes the other.
In a more recent study in 2016, Dr. James M Rippe, a cardiologist and Dr. Theodore J Angelopoulos, Director of the Obesity Research Center at Emory & Henry College, stated in their article, Sugars and Health Controversies: What Does the Science …show more content…
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, misinterpretation is defined as 1: explain wrongly and 2: to understand wrongly. There appear to be a misinterpretation that sugar caused obesity. Similar to how my friend misinterpreted the hard to pronounce ingredients labeled on energy drinks as things that are bad for you, many people misinterpreted the correlation of sugar and obesity as something that is concrete and causal. It is important that we recognize that there is a correlation between sugar and obesity, however, there isn’t sufficient evidence that says that one causes the other. And in the words of many of my previous professors, correlation does not imply causation. This term is the fallacy that one thing that is correlated with another no matter how strong the correlation, does not mean that a causal relation exists. Dr. Gerald W. Bracey, an independent researcher wrote in his article called Tips for readers of research – No causation from correlation, “The human brain seems wired to see causal relationships. Still, there are times when our hardwiring or irresistible impulse leads us to see causal relationships where none exist.” There seem to be a history of exploring what we don’t know and then jumping to conclusions without proof or evidence. This seems to be the case with energy drinks. And with easy access to information and news, it seems easy to misinterpret which ones are actually
The information that sugar is bad for you seems to be common knowledge. Where did this belief come from? One of the first books on the dangers of sugar was in 1972 by Dr. John Yudkin, a professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of London. The book was called Pure, White and Deadly. In this book, Yudkin introduced the idea that sugar is dangerous. Yudkin stated that “if only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation in any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.” So, what does sugar actually do to …show more content…
This idea is also reaffirmed in the meta-analyses called Do Fructose-Containing Sugars Lead to Adverse Health Consequences? Results of Recent Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses by Vanessa Ha, Adrian I Cozma, Vivian LW Choo, Sonia Blanco Mejia, Russell J de Souza, and John L Sievenpiper. The same article also mentioned that “it is difficult to separate the contribution of fructose-containing sugars from that of other factors in the epidemic of obesity…” (Ha, Cozma, Choo, Mejia, Souza, and Sievenpiper) These studies suggest that since there have been a spike in both obesity and sugar consumption, there is a correlation. However, we do not know for sure that one causes the other.
In a more recent study in 2016, Dr. James M Rippe, a cardiologist and Dr. Theodore J Angelopoulos, Director of the Obesity Research Center at Emory & Henry College, stated in their article, Sugars and Health Controversies: What Does the Science …show more content…
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, misinterpretation is defined as 1: explain wrongly and 2: to understand wrongly. There appear to be a misinterpretation that sugar caused obesity. Similar to how my friend misinterpreted the hard to pronounce ingredients labeled on energy drinks as things that are bad for you, many people misinterpreted the correlation of sugar and obesity as something that is concrete and causal. It is important that we recognize that there is a correlation between sugar and obesity, however, there isn’t sufficient evidence that says that one causes the other. And in the words of many of my previous professors, correlation does not imply causation. This term is the fallacy that one thing that is correlated with another no matter how strong the correlation, does not mean that a causal relation exists. Dr. Gerald W. Bracey, an independent researcher wrote in his article called Tips for readers of research – No causation from correlation, “The human brain seems wired to see causal relationships. Still, there are times when our hardwiring or irresistible impulse leads us to see causal relationships where none exist.” There seem to be a history of exploring what we don’t know and then jumping to conclusions without proof or evidence. This seems to be the case with energy drinks. And with easy access to information and news, it seems easy to misinterpret which ones are actually