Is Sugar Toxic?

[Dakki]

Here.

I started out thinking this was yet another case of fearmongering by the nice people who've given us nuclear disasters where nobody actually gets a harmful dose of radiation and swine flu epidemics that are actually less deadly than good ol' seasonal flu, but I have to say the author actually makes a very compelling argument.

I'm sure there's better-informed people on the topic here. What's the mainstream position on this?

[JHeald]

It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie' date=' he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them. [/quote']

This sounds like a little bit of fear-mongering to me. Sugar is not "a poison by itself". Merriam-webster defines a poison as "a substance that through its chemical action usually kills, injures, or impairs an organism". As far as I know, sucrose posses no chemical properties that classify it as a poison. Let's take an anecdotal observation: yeast thrive on sugar, so if sugar was toxic, wouldn't it kill/harm yeast? They are eukaryotes, just like us humans. I think Lustig is probably close when he claims that our overconsumption of sugar is [one of] the leading causes of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses, although I have a hard time accepting the claim that excessive sugar intake leads to higher incidences of cancer. Sure cancer cells consume large quantities of glucose, but that doesn't mean not eating glucose will inhibit or prevent cancer: that is an absurdly simplistic view of cancer.

Just my two cents: fear-mongering, yes; a few valid points if taken with a grain of salt, yes.

[cdh]

Interesting article... I'd be interested in reading more on the fructose=>liver fat=>insulin resistance hypothesis. Yet another reason to avoid the high fructose corn syrup...

I also like the differentiation between "isocaloric" and "isometabolic" equivalences in dietary analysis. It has always been an intuition of mine that the energy expended cracking the energy out of food had to be considered.

Edited April 14, 2011 by cdh (log)

[gfweb]

This is really a version of the high carb/low carb debate. Sugar is a super-bioavailable (ie completely and quickly absorbed and broken down) carbohydrate so diets high in sugar will have exaggerated responses to carbohydrates eg. high rise in insulin after eating, fat accumulation which leads to insulin resistance...which requires more insulin...which makes more fat etc etc. and eventually, in a susceptible individual, adult onset diabetes. (gross over simplification, but that's pretty much what happens).

High carb also increases blood fats which participate in hardening of the arteries and lead to stroke and heart attacks.

So as far as I see at the core this is nothing new and probably mostly true. But the hysteria is uncalled-for. Just use some moderation.

[bmdaniel]

I think gfweb is right - at it's heart this boils down to low-carb/high-carb debate. It's a question of degree, because some would argue that most carbohydrates are almost/equally as bad as sugar (even whole grains, etc.). If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend Gary Taubes other writing as well - there is a long article that he wrote for the NYT that was his start on the topic, and then two books, Good Calories, Bad Calories (which is very lengthy and very dense but very interesting, well referenced examination of some of the science on the issues), and his relatively new book, Why We Get Fat, which is more accessible but less scholarly.

[Moopheus]

Here's an analysis more or less in English of one of the studies claiming a link between fructose and cancer:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/08/fructose_and_pancreatic_cancer.php

Here's another summary of frustose-related info:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6501

I think the take-away here, other than the general principle that there's a wide gap between real science and what you read about science in the news, is that you don't need to worry about it too much if you keep your consumption to reasonable levels. Fruit is still good for you--you would have to eat a vast quantity of whole fruit to match the output of food processors. Don't eat too much junk food, soda, or boxed breakfast cereal. I mean, Americans consume five times as much soda as they do fruit juice. Where do you think all the excess sugar in our diet is coming from?

[JAZ]

Yet another reason to avoid the high fructose corn syrup...

Actually, one thing Taubes points out in the article is that from a nutritional standpoint, there's virtually no difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

But marketing aside, the two sweeteners are effectively identical in their biological effects. . . .

Refined sugar (that is, sucrose) is made up of a molecule of the carbohydrate glucose, bonded to a molecule of the carbohydrate fructose — a 50-50 mixture of the two. The fructose, which is almost twice as sweet as glucose, is what distinguishes sugar from other carbohydrate-rich foods like bread or potatoes that break down upon digestion to glucose alone. The more fructose in a substance, the sweeter it will be. High-fructose corn syrup, as it is most commonly consumed, is 55 percent fructose, and the remaining 45 percent is nearly all glucose. It was first marketed in the late 1970s and was created to be indistinguishable from refined sugar when used in soft drinks. Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical.

[bostonapothecary]

the article made me wonder how they propose to take the sugar out of people's diets. i think the solution would be to acquire "acquired tastes" which i see as a rebellion against our drive to seek sweetness. if you develop a taste for "dryness" in all of its forms you may be healthier.

i stop by the coffee shop every day. i take mine sugarless while i watch so many other people heap on the sugar. we all probably get the same satisfaction out of our cup, but the sugarless coffee drinker is probably healthier.

what process got me to crave dryness?

in the fall i tried to develop a theory of acquired tastes:

Sweet Rebellion: a short theory of acquired tastes and an unsavory explanation of harmony

then i tried to explain the mechanics of the change to dryness:

“Culinary Aestheticism – A Tale of Two Harmonies”

everyone knows the problem, but can we engineer a solution with a cultural change? it is easier to take the sugar out of your diet if you learn to like it less.

[bmdaniel]

Or you could just roll the dice and use sweetener?

[andiesenji]

Anything, used to excess can be "poison" and sugar or sugar relatives and substitutes are no exception.

Moderation - as many have said before, is the balancing force.

If one wants to be argumentative, it is easy to point out the average life span of Europeans/English and etc., prior to sugar appearing as a significant portion of the diet was considerably less than the current life span of Europeans/English and now Americans.

However, that does not take into account hundreds or thousands of other factors that also affect not only the length but also the quality of life.

Sugar certainly did not increase the life span but it could be made to appear that it did.

Just as not all tooth decay can be attributed to refined sugar consumption (some peoples eat NO refined sugar and still have tooth decay and loss) there are a great many conditions that can't simply be blamed on sugar consumption.

Before the internet and WWW there were paper publications that sold well because their covers carried provocative headlines and these made money for the publishers. These are not much of a money maker now, so they have had to transfer these dramatic writings and the headlines, to the internet.

Scary announcements do bring in the bucks. They are not always completely true and often in the past have been proved to be totally false.

One excellent example were the totally erroneous "studies" that killed the production and sale of sodium cyclamate when it was banned by the FDA in 1970.

It is interesting that these studies were financed by the sugar industry - (and were carried out in some of the same labs that found tobacco non addictive!)

A couple of years ago Coke Zero was introduced to Venezuela using sodium cyclamate as a sweetener but President Chavez personally banned it because he thought it was a plot to poison his citizens.

Numerous studies all over the world have shown that sodium cyclamate is no more poisonous than other artificial sweeteners and is much cheaper (10.00/kg) than Aspartame (150.00/kg) and the manufacturer of the latter has also financed some more recent "studies" to prove sodium cyclamate metabolic products causes cancer. None of these so-called "studies" call attention to the fact that the amounts fed to laboratory rats would, if adjusted for size, would require an adult human to consume more than a pound of the stuff each day for three months.

Any scientific study can be manipulated to obtain the results wanted by those financing the study. Truly independent studies are not all that common because these are expensive and someone has to pay for them. Far too often the money behind the studies comes from those who want to manipulate the marketplace.

Edited April 14, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[Dakki]

Anything, used to excess can be "poison" and sugar or sugar relatives and substitutes are no exception.

Moderation - as many have said before, is the balancing force.

Well, yes. Conversely, many "harmful" things, used in moderation, can be harmless or even beneficial. We know what the minimum harmful dose for, say, radiation, botulinum toxin or arsenic are (and we actually receive minute amounts of these on a daily basis with no ill effects) but we don't know at what point sugar flips from healthy and delicious source of quick energy to potential murder weapon. So am I still in danger if I cut out my 3-liter-a-day Coke habit but still put sugar in my coffee and eat the occasional slice of cake?

[paulraphael]

This whole business is very strange. Usually this kind of fearmongering comes from someone with mostly imaginary credentials. This time it's by an MD PhD with a legitemate research background in nutrition and endocrinology.

But I did a PubMed search for his published papers, and found that none of them supports his public conclusions that sugar is somehow toxic. He's published a few papers that show that (surprise!) way too much sugar is bad, and that it can be bad in some previously unconfirmed ways. But there's nothing about it being some kind of evil substance, like plutonium, or even trans-fats ... and this is the thesis he's put forth publicly.

It often seem suspect when a scientist seeks a public audience in a non-reviewed forum. It's not unlike the pundits who spread their climate science denial messages on youtube and in public lectures, but who have no publication record (or even publication attempts) in legitemate peer reviewed journals.

Edited April 14, 2011 by paulraphael (log)

[cdh]

Yet another reason to avoid the high fructose corn syrup...

Actually, one thing Taubes points out in the article is that from a nutritional standpoint, there's virtually no difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

But marketing aside, the two sweeteners are effectively identical in their biological effects. . . .

Refined sugar (that is, sucrose) is made up of a molecule of the carbohydrate glucose, bonded to a molecule of the carbohydrate fructose — a 50-50 mixture of the two. The fructose, which is almost twice as sweet as glucose, is what distinguishes sugar from other carbohydrate-rich foods like bread or potatoes that break down upon digestion to glucose alone. The more fructose in a substance, the sweeter it will be. High-fructose corn syrup, as it is most commonly consumed, is 55 percent fructose, and the remaining 45 percent is nearly all glucose. It was first marketed in the late 1970s and was created to be indistinguishable from refined sugar when used in soft drinks. Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical.

The logic here seems to imply that we're uncritically accepting the risible assertion that sugars are toxic as a premise... from which the logic that a 55% fructose 45% glucose compound is equivalent to a 50% 50% compound. The same logic would support a statement that cyanide and strychnine "are effectively identical" in their lethal effects.

10% more of the problematic molecule in HFCS vs sugar seems to say they're not equivalent, and there is more problematic fructose in it than in cane sugar. I still read this article as a reason to avoid HFCS.

Edited April 14, 2011 by cdh (log)

[MaxH]

Keep in mind I haven't read the recent article, but it's a technical subject (not the only such) with an epic record of fashionable misinformation (especially online) and scarcity of a few background facts (see below) that put, especially, HFCS into completely different light. What I mostly object to is frequent myopic focus on HFCS or fructose (without questioning the now-common gross consumption of other sugars). More about why, below.

Dr Lustig at UCSF isn't news; one friend was taken with his fructose-is-poison pitch a year or two back until shown some of its unstated context. Other friends are heavyweight experts in relevant science (more so possibly than Lustig) and have helped to fill out the picture. Lustig's pitch has reported information selectively, omitted essential context, completely misstated some facts (Japanese diet DOES include fresh produce and desserts, therefore significant fructose, also sucrose), and compared liver damage from gross chronic alcohol excess to liver damage from gross chronic fructose excess to conclude glibly that fructose acted like "alcohol without the buzz." That constitutes pop-culture science (something I run into periodically). Frankly I cringe to see someone using their respectable-looking title to lend legitimacy to what's more dispassionately characterizable as an opinionated and emotional crusade.

One repeated error of pundits has been to pull results of extreme-diet metabolic studies -- these studies occur for many nutrients and reasons -- and confidently infer conclusions from them about normal diets under conditions rendering the study irrelevant. Presence of other nutrients changes everything. For example, fructose indeed doesn't elicit the insulin-leptin response and can theoretically cause food cravings. But glucose has the exact opposite effect, completely changing the response if taken with fructose. There seems to be plenty of literature also demonstrating that moderate fructose intakes in diets induce no actual weight gain or serum triglyceride rise, contrary to one of Lustig's rhetorical points. Summary from an independent researcher (John White) who reviewed the biomedical literature:

"Although examples of pure fructose causing metabolic upset at high concentrations abound, especially when fed as the sole carbohydrate source, there is no evidence that the common fructose-glucose sweeteners do the same. Thus, studies using extreme carbohydrate diets may be useful for probing biochemical pathways, but they have no relevance to the human diet or to current consumption."

If fructose is "poison," we're all zombies; here's why, in a nutshell (you can readily verify this basic, non-controversial background if interested.)

1. Fructose and glucose are common or dominant natural sugars in our ancestral diet. Many natural foods (apples, bananas, grapes, pears, peppers, onions, etc.) contain 5-15% natural fructose-glucose mix -- more, sometimes, than percentages in soft drinks containing HFCS. Honey is almost completely fructose and glucose, a natural HFCS. Any concern over these sugars would logically consider their many natural sources and our long history of consuming them.

2. If you eat table sugar (sucrose), then before anything else happens to it, your body converts it to a fructose-glucose mix (sucrose itself is not directly usable). Sucrose's hydrolysis to fructose and glucose starts in your mouth, with salivary enzymes.

This means your body cannot actually tell whether you ate table sugar or HFCS; and you get HFCS anyway in natural foods extensively demonstrated as healthy.

I have found some people so convinced of simplistic evil associations of HFCS or fructose that they won't even try to think through the implications of this basic biochemistry. And, of course, many people are unwilling to examine shallow opinions when Google much more easily furnishes thousands of references that will seem to rationalize them.

[gfweb]

Plenty of people with legitimate MD PhD degrees are still full of crap. I could give you a list. Lol

They may have their own agenda. They may be just plain stupid. They may have fallen in love with a theory. This guys degrees clearly haven't kept him from making crazy assertions. Fructose causes cancer. Right.

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[andiesenji]

Plenty of people with legitimate MD PhD degrees are still full of crap. I could give you a list. Lol

They may have their own agenda. They may be just plain stupid. They may have fallen in love with a theory. This guys degrees clearly haven't kept him from making crazy assertions. Fructose causes cancer. Right.

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Well said!

I still say, "follow the money" somebody has to be making something out of this.

Edited April 14, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[gfweb]

Plenty of people with legitimate MD PhD degrees are still full of crap. I could give you a list. Lol

They may have their own agenda. They may be just plain stupid. They may have fallen in love with a theory. This guys degrees clearly haven't kept him from making crazy assertions. Fructose causes cancer. Right.

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Well said!

I still say, "follow the money" somebody has to be making something out of this.

Checking his research grants and departmental funding might be revealing. Or who he consults for...

Most of these guys are honest but there are a few who are cashing in.

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[MaxH]

..."follow the money" somebody has to be making something out of this.

Maybe. Seeing some consumers scapegoat HFCS for all human ills, utterly diverting their attention from other sugars,* it's struck to me that no deliberate whisper campaign engineered by sugar makers could possibly have succeeded better.

But! In my other experience of demonstrable technical misconceptions, no such money motivation has been necessary. Lustig may get more talk-show invites now than if he stuck to pediatric endocrinology, but that is not a necessary motivation. People take ideas to heart and stop examining them before they know enough of the story to put their first concern into clearer perspective. It's like in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the bad guys copy just one side of a medal showing directions to a treasure, but not the other side which then changes the directions.

I'm familiar with several such cases, here are two offhand, where misconceptions take root without aid of money factors:

Teflon cookware hazards. Teflon has one particular safety hazard, public since the 1960s for anyone interested; but other cookware has a variant of the same hazard; these are very rarely problems in practice despite heavy reliance on Teflon in even the most abusive commercial kitchens; and some of the public has so garbled the issue as to misperceive teflon itself as poisonous even in normal use -- a perverse notion since it is one of the most inert materials known, which is why things won't stick to it.

Wireless equipment "radiation" concerns (fashionable now in situations like cellphone towers and wireless utility meters) among people who picked up just enough knowledge to be aware there are imperfectly-understood electromagnetic biological interactions, but not enough to understand why it's completely irrelevant in these cases.

*USDA (that's our "Ag. Ministry," to those of you in other countries) now says we Americans consume around 145 pounds/year, up from 125 when I first saw that data in the 1970s -- we are gaining on the Scots, who consumed 175 when we did merely 125.

[gfweb]

Absolutely right. You don't need corruption to explain popular misconceptions.

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[gfweb]

One common source of error is the extrapolation of risk. For exp say the risk of cancer from a chemical at high dose is x and the risk at a lower but still high dose is less but still a lot. A line is drawn thru the points and continued to commonly encountered levels. This line is used to predict risk in everyday life.

But what is ignored is the concept that there may be a level beneath which there is no effect. Think about water temp. Boiling water will cook meat and lower temps will cook it less. If you extrapolate down to 90 degs F some cooking would be predicted. But this fails to take in the threshold for protein denaturation, beneath which there is no thermal effect.

Biology is full of such thresholds and it confounds our ability to predict risk accurately.

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Edited April 15, 2011 by gfweb (log)

[andiesenji]

One common source of error is the extrapolation of risk. For exp say the risk of cancer from a chemical at high dose is x and the risk at a lower but still high dose is less but still a lot. A line is drawn thru the points and continued to commonly encountered levels. This line is used to predict risk in everyday life.

But what is ignored is the concept that there may be a level beneath which there is no effect. Think about water temp. Boiling water will cook meat and lower temps will cook it less. If you extrapolate down to 90 degs F some cooking would be predicted. But this fails to take in the threshold for protein denaturation, beneath which there is no thermal effect.

Biology is full of such thresholds and it confounds our ability to predict risk accurately.

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I remember some twenty years ago when there was a great hoo-ha about charcoal grilled meats and the carcinogenic effects of eating same.

Again, the consumption of the stuff was way beyond any amount that it would have been possible for someone to eat.

Some wag wrote an essay, I think it was in the New Yorker, that his doctor must have been trying to engender cancer in him because he had been prescribing activated charcoal for a decade or more.

Give someone an inch and they will take a mile.

Whether it is "fame" or $$$$, someone is getting something out of this. Who knows what the payoff will be?

[Chris Hennes]

It's basic human nature (in the most literal evolutionary sense... the research is fascinating) that we are more or less completely unable to handle the notion of relative risk when it comes so small risks: a scientist who studies the adverse affects of X is going to naturally and completely logically be prone to dramatically overestimate the actual danger of X, because he or she knows so much about it, and spends their life immersed in the subject. No malice, unethical behavior, or money trail is required. Cue "driving on the highway" example....

[Dakki]

Okay, several people have mentioned this hypothesis is a version of the high carb/low carb debate. Can someone explain that? I don't keep up with dietary science stuff, since it all seems to be up in the air at the moment.

[Mjx]

Okay, several people have mentioned this hypothesis is a version of the high carb/low carb debate. Can someone explain that? I don't keep up with dietary science stuff, since it all seems to be up in the air at the moment.

Among healthcare professionals, there are those who believe that humans do best when they consume very little in the way of carbohydrates (particularly in the form of starches and processed sugars), and others who believe that significant quantities of carbohydrates are important to health.

Put really, really simply, carbohydrates are primarily used by the body for fuel, while the body uses fats and proteins to rebuild existing structures, and, when there is an excess, as fuel. The more active you are, the more nutrients your body requires, both for structural maintenance and fuel (something worth keeping in mind when research done on athletes is cited as evidence for either stance).

Both stances are 'up in the air', because the tendency is to claim that one approach or the other is best for all, although from what I've seen, this actually varies from one person to the other, and there isn't any single approach that works best for everyone/all the time (but it's fairly simple to figure out on your own, for yourself).

As far as sugar being poisonous goes, it's definitely possible to have a firmly-held, apparently well-supported belief without commercial motivation (consider the people who may be seen holding signs saying 'Sinners repent, the end is nigh!', or, if you've lived in NYC for a while, the shouty woman who was strongly anti-pornography, and could be seen regularly in Union Square); this won't necessarily make you right.

As others have pointed out, many innocuous things may become toxic if they're taken in excess, and agreed, that, as a population, we eat too much sugar. However, the suggestion that sugar is a poison is far from new, and many decades of research have yielded no conclusive evidence that it is actually poisonous to humans, although it's reasonable to assume it wouldn't hurt to cut down a goodish bit.

What's troubling about this (or any) extreme stance is that it inevitably creates a reflexive backlash, leading to precisely opposite results to those desired (perhaps, then, this guy is actually in the pay of the sugar people ).

[JHeald]

...It's like in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the bad guys copy just one side of a medal showing directions to a treasure, but not the other side which then changes the directions...

To be fair to the fake Nazi, he did grab the hot metal in a panic while a building was burning around him, so let's not be too hard on him...