Experts Now Say, "It's the Sugar, Stupid"
Sugar price set to soar in India time to cut down your sugar intake now.
Here are more details : Cut down your Sugar intake to battle with Obesity
“A tablespoon of sugar, for example, contains between 50 and 60 calories but very little else from the standpoint of nutritional content. A 12-ounce nondiet soft drink will have 3 tablespoons of sugar — totaling between 150 and 180 calories with no other nutrients.
That explains why many experts are now recommending that people limit their sugar intake, though these recommendations vary depending on who is making them. The World Health Organization advises restricting sugar consumption to 10 percent of daily calories, while the National Academy of Sciences advises limiting it to 25 percent.
Those who should be especially careful to limit their intake are obese, sedentary people, especially those with serious blood lipid problems and people who have type II (adult-onset) diabetes. A recent study, for example, in which subjects were fed 28 percent of their calories from sugar during a 10-week period turned up increases in body weight and blood pressure.
“Obviously, you don’t need lots of sugar if you already have diabetes,” Keith says. “But even borderline diabetics who already suffer from some insulin resistance should limit their intake.”
Unfortunately, reducing this intake isn’t as easy as it seems.
“You’d be surprised at just how much hidden sugar they put in some food products,” Keith says.
“Depending on what you typically buy at the grocery store, you could end up staying well below the World Health Organization’s recommended 10 percent or vastly exceeding it.”
Obesity: is it related to sugar in children’s diets?
Children’s diets tend to be higher in sugars than those of adults, and parents often associate sugar with obesity. Contrary to this hypothesis, surveys of various age groups all tend to show an inverse relationship between sugars and body mass index (BMI). In the latest National Diet and Nutrition Survey of children aged 11/2 to 41/2 years, children with the lowest sugar intakes, or whose diets were lowest in biscuits and cakes, or table sugar and preserves, had the highest BMI. Over-emphasizing the avoidance of sugars may, paradoxically, be counterproductive in preventing obesity. Due to the phenomenon known as the sugar:fat see-saw, a diet low in sugars tends to be proportionately high in fat. It is concluded that there is little justification in limiting NME sugars to 10 per cent of energy, for the avoidance of obesity.
