Just say No to Sugary Cereal.

We know kids shouldn’t eat high sugar cereals. But actually implementing a ban is likely to defeat all but the most determined of parents. A very recent study out of Yale University in the US may give some hope to timid parents.

The researchers tried a tactic most parents would be reluctant to attempt. Instead of educating children, they just removed sugar-filled food as an option.

The researchers looked at a group of 89 kids (aged 5-12) and what they ate when they were away at summer camp. Half the group were offered only low-sugar cereals (the American equivalent of Weet-bix etc) and the other half were offered only high sugar cereals. Both groups had access to as much table sugar, strawberries and bananas and fruit juice as they wanted.

The Yale team wanted to know firstly if the kids offered low sugar cereals would protest and refuse breakfast. Perhaps surprisingly, 100 percent of the low-sugar group just ate what was on offer (1 percent of the high sugar group refused – obviously some aberrant child snuck in).

The interesting thing is that they ate alot less, in fact they ate half as much. The low-sugar group on average ate the recommended serving of the cereal (one cup). But the high sugar group ate on average two cups. The low sugar group compensated for less cereal by adding table sugar to their cereal and drinking more juice, but even when that was included in the calculations, they ate significantly less sugar than the kids munching on the high sugar cereal.

The researchers didn’t do it, but an interesting extension to this study would be to remove the table sugar and juice, but make sure there was plenty of cold milk to drink. I rather suspect the result would be even more impressive. My guess would be that the kids would once again just eat what was on offer, and perhaps eat less cereal and drink more milk, but their sugar consumption would be insignificant.

The researchers also asked the children to rate their breakfasts out of five (1 being the best and 5 being the worst). The high-sugar kids rated theirs 1.5 on average (no surprises there). They thought their breakfasts were just swell.

The low-sugar kids were of course, nowhere near as happy. Their average was 1.6. In other words, they had no problems with their brekkie’s either.

The interesting thing about this study is that it did what many parents find very difficult. It just removed the option. There was no attempt at moderation or education. The option was simply not there. The kids weren’t unhappy. And they didn’t starve. They just moved on with the new reality.

FYI: I will be giving two public lectures in Brisbane in the upcoming week. There’s more info on both at www.sweetpoison.com.au.

Time to smash juice's health halo

Drinking fruit juice is a nutritious way to get extremely fat. But juice marketers have us convinced that sugar that was once part of fruit is much healthier than sugar that was once part of sugar cane. We’re not entirely convinced. We still drink 3 litres of soft drink for every litre of juice. But that’s still 700ml of juice a week and growing at about 1.5 litres a year.

We love juice because it seems to defy mum’s first law of food: If it tastes good it can’t be good for you. And that’s because even though it’s yummy, it is stuffed with loads of vitamin C. Even the thickest nutritionist knows we all need that vitamin C, right?

Most plants and animals can produce all the Vitamin C they need. Unfortunately humans and other apes descended from tree-swingers never bothered to develop the necessary enzyme. This is probably because our prehistoric diet had plenty of fresh fruit and veg.

If you run low on Vitamin C, you will eventually die of scurvy. And if we are to believe the juice purveyors, we are all on the verge of expiring from lack of Vitamin C.

But do you know anyone that has died of scurvy? Me neither. That’s because it’s extraordinarily difficult to deplete your stores of vitamin C enough to achieve it. Pretty much the only way you’ll do it will be to lock yourself up on a sailing ship for 6 months. Even then you’d be pushing it. Captain Cook didn’t lose anyone to scurvy on his way over here and all he fed his men was pickled cabbage and salted meat. There were no stops at the mid-pacific juice bar for that lot.

According to the World Health Organisation, you would need to be totally deprived of Vitamin C for two months before you showed the first signs of scurvy. And even then all you would need to fix the problem would the amount of Vitamin C found in half a small bag of hot chips.

The other major nutritional claims for fruit juices are that they are good sources of folate and potassium. And while both are important, anyone who eats bread, nuts, meat, fresh fruit or vegetables (well just about anything really) will be getting more than any fruit juice would ever deliver.

A glass of apple juice is no better for you than a glass of Coke. The average soft drink is 10% sugar and so is the average juice. And while the nutritional content claims are (vaguely) true, they are about as relevant as slapping “Asbestos Free” on the front of a bottle of Coke (no, this is not a suggestion).

Big Sugar is green with envy at people queuing round the block to buy sugar water from juice bars. Coca-cola tried to get in on the act and buy Berri, our biggest juice purveyor by a country mile. But the ACCC decided that wouldn’t be good for competition (it is, however, ok for a Japanese Brewer to own it).

And earlier this year, Coke got knocked back again when it tried to buy half the Chinese fruit juice market. I don’t know why they’re bothering. All they need to do is source their sugar molecules from fruit juice concentrate rather than cane, chuck in some multivitamins and, voila, healthy sugar water – oh wait – they’ve already thought of that: Glaceau Vitamin Water.

None of this is secret, so why does the government endorse juice as an alternative to fresh fruit? Why does the heart foundation hand out ticks to fruit juice makers? And why is juice promoted as a “green food” in school canteens?

In July, I asked the Queensland Deputy Premier and Minister for Health, Paul Lucas, why juice was endorsed as health food in schools. A flunkey immediately responded (at the end of September) letting me know that the Minister’s reply was awaiting signature and so, of course, I am still waiting. Maybe he forgot how to sign his name?

It’s time to knock the health halo off the head of the juice makers and place them firmly in the sugar-water category they have so successfully evaded. It’s time for governments to stop aiding and abetting the deception and its time kids were fed water at school instead of sugar-water dressed up as health food.

Should cardiologists be selling fructose?

Conspiracy theorists love to believe that the moon landings were staged perhaps somewhere like the Universal back lot, that computer virus software is written by the anti-virus companies and that JFK was really assassinated by Kevin Rudd’s cat (or something like that). I don’t know why they bother with all the lateral thinking when real-life conspiracies abound.

Big Sugar makes many products that will cause heart disease. But unless you are wilfully ignorant, you’re unlikely to be suffering under the impression that a Coke and a Mars Bar is a healthy breakfast.

Recently, Nestle upped the ante when it started pushing Fruit Fix (a product that is 72% sugar), as a healthy alternative to fruit. It nudged it a bit further when it got the Heart Foundation to endorse it as health food. But we’re still not in conspiracy territory. That’s merely deceptive.

We cross the boundary into potential conspiracy candidate with Nestle’s Optifast shake diet. The primary ingredients of Optifast are skim milk powder and fructose.

Fructose is one half of table sugar. It is definitively associated with the causes of heart disease and this was starkly proven in some human trials conducted by the University of California earlier this year. The investigators divided 32 overweight men and women into two groups, and instructed each group to drink a sweetened beverage three times per day. One group’s drinks were sweetened with fructose and the other group were drinking glucose (the other half of sugar).

After just 10 weeks, the fructose group had experienced a major metabolic shift that did not occur with the glucose group. They had a significant worsening of blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity. Their LDL cholesterol and oxidised LDL readings increased dramatically. Liver synthesis of fat had increased by 75%. And visceral fat had increased by 14%. In short, they had been turned into heart attacks waiting to happen.

By definition, Optifast is sold to people who are overweight. So Nestle is selling them a “cure” to their condition, which significantly increases health risks across the board, but particularly for heart disease. Brand diversification? Yep. Wildly irresponsible? Certainly. Surprising? Not really, it is Nestle we’re talking about.

No, to be a true conspiracy, we need a hidden benefit to the purveyor. Sure, Nestle makes money out of Optifast but aside from that, how does it benefit from giving fat people heart attacks? Now if a cardiologist was flogging Optifast to weight-challenged folks, then we’d be talking genuine gold-plated conspiracy theory.

Well as it happens, in little ol’ Brisbane, cardiologists do dispense Optifast to overweight people. The Wesley Weight Management Clinic (WWMC) is owned by “a group of Cardiologists who are based at The Wesley Hospital”.

WWMC proudly proclaim that it “uses a nutritionally balanced meal replacement called Optifast 800”. The Optifast 800 range of shakes contains about 18g of fructose per serve. And WWMC advises people to consume five serves a day instead of their normal meals.

If a punter were to follow the program as laid out, they would be consuming about 90g of fructose per day. Or put another way, almost half of their energy intake would be coming from fructose. To get that much fructose from sugar, they would need to consume 43 teaspoons of sugar a day. Would you like some food with your sugar diet?

The University of California study fed its subjects 25% of their calories from fructose for just 10 weeks and produced truly frightening results. WWMC tells its paying customers to consume 45% of their calories from fructose for six months. They will lose weight. If you replaced everything you ate with a small chocolate milk five times a day, you’d lose weight, too. But what kind of damage are they doing at the metabolic level?

I’m not seriously suggesting that these cardiologists are setting out to create business for their day jobs. I never ascribe to conspiracy that which could be adequately explained by ignorance. I suspect it started out as a nice little earner. And it’s just unfortunate that it turns out that what they’re serving up is something the research says is the worst possible thing you could give to a heart-attack candidate.

I have, of course, pointed this out to WWMC, but it seems disinclined to change its ways. I expected a note telling me that, of course, it was reviewing its program in the light of the latest research and fructose would soon be off the menu. I didn’t get that. Instead, it said: “we believe that Optifast 800 is the most suitable product on the market and do not believe the fructose content would constitute a ‘high fructose diet’ implicated in the research.”

One wonders how high the fructose content would have to be before WWMC became worried about it. Ah well, I guess doctor always knows best.

Also published in Crikey