The sugar deception: Why does the ABC bother?

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Bill Shrapnel

I guess if anything was going to drag me out of semi-retirement on my little vineyard in Orange it would be yet another highly misleading story about sugar on the ABC, in this instance the Lateline program on Tuesday night. Why the ABC, my preferred source of news and current affairs, bothered to essentially repeat the same biased story about sugar it ran two years ago on Radio National is beyond me.

Again, the focus of the ABC story was a former economist who gave up sugar and lost weight. Yes, I know, anecdotal evidence. And yes, if he had given up fat he would have lost weight too, or starch or alcohol. Cutting down on calories does induce weight loss. However, the man’s personal experience was with sugar and having been enlightened he apparently embarked on a mission to rid the Australian diet of the root of all evil.

But he had a problem: Australia’s leading expert on carbohydrates and health, Professor Jennie Brand-Miller from the University of Sydney, was not overly concerned about sugar. Her view was that health effects of carbohydrate-rich foods were related to their blood sugar-raising potential or glycaemic index. Viewed through this perspective, foods rich in refined starch, which strongly raise blood glucose, may be just as bad, or even worse, than foods rich in sugar. Despite considerable scientific support such permissive views on sugar could not be tolerated so a kind of fatwa was issued: Brand-Miller had to be beheaded, in a profession sense. And the ABC and the economist have been after her ever since.

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Trans fats: FDA loses patience with recalcitrant US fats and oils industry

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

Food companies hate the idea of being regulated i.e. having the government tell them what to do. However, with freedom in the marketplace comes responsibility. The best way to avoid regulation is for an industry to do the right thing by its customers and health authorities when a problem with the industry’s products is identified.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration recently announced that partially hydrogenated oils (containing trans fats) were no longer ‘Generally Regarded as Safe’ and gave the fats and oils industry three years to get them out of the food supply. So, begrudgingly, the US industry will be forced to adopt a position that companies in the rest of the developed world adopted 20 years ago.

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How many people died as a consequence of the ABC’s Catalyst cholesterol program?

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

According to a new University of Sydney study thousands of preventable heart attacks and strokes may occur as a result of a biased television program.

On 24 and 31 October 2013, ABC television’s Catalyst program aired a two-part series that questioned the link between blood cholesterol and heart disease, and whether current dietary advice or statin medication was effective in lowering heart disease risk. Although the first program on diet was very biased Catalyst may have got away with it as the science around diet and heart disease is considered rather ‘soft’ and is still unfolding.

However, the second program on statins, cholesterol and heart disease was on very firm scientific ground. The last time I looked there were 24 meta-analyses on statin medication and heart disease risk and all showed benefit. But rather than present this perspective Catalyst decided that the public interest would be better served by sowing seeds of doubt.

There were howls of protest. To their credit, other journalists at the ABC took aim at Catalyst. Media Watch presenter Paul Barry said … Catalyst struck us as sensationalist and grossly unbalanced; and some of their so-called ‘experts’ had questionable qualifications.

The ABC’s health guru Dr Norman Swan considered the health implications saying that People will die as a result of the Catalyst program …. It doesn’t get much stronger than that. Was Swan going over the top, or did he just have a good understanding of his subject?

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Modern Diet Myth No. 10: Australian teenagers eat 40 teaspoons of sugar a day

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

In the movie That Sugar Film Damon Gameau set about testing the effects of a high sugar diet on his healthy body. He increased his sugar intake to 40 teaspoons a day on the basis that this was ‘just slightly more than that of the average teenager worldwide’.

That’s an interesting claim but is it true?

Actually, it’s a strange measure to have chosen as it is almost impossible to verify. Most countries in the world simply don’t have good dietary data on teenagers, or adults for that matter. Let’s look at the available data and consider whether the claim is close to being right.

Any global average for sugar intake will be greatly influenced by typical intakes in populous countries such as China, India and Indonesia. Yet sugar intakes in these countries are very low – of the order of 20 grams per day or less, which equates to a miserly 4 teaspoons of sugar per day.

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Modern Diet Myth No. 9: Processed foods are bad for your health

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

We regularly hear that processed foods are not good for health. Truth or myth?

What’s wrong with food processing?

There are three major criticisms of food processing and how it affects the nutritional quality of foods. The first is that processing lowers the nutrient content of a food either by exposing it to heat or by discarding a nutrient-rich portion. Secondly, during processing so-called ‘nutrients of concern’, such as saturated fat, salt and sugar, may be added. A third criticism is that processing may alter the nature of a food unfavourably, for example, by increasing its glycaemic index.

All of these things are true, so processed foods are obviously worse for health than unprocessed foods. Right?

Not so fast.

What’s right with food processing?

If you buy a piece of lean rump steak from your local butcher, do you eat it in its natural raw form or do you toss it into a hot frying pan first? Yes, this heat processing causes some loss of nutrients but we do it because cooked meat tastes so much better than raw meat. Also, cooked meat is much safer to eat than uncooked meat.

The same issues apply when food is processed by a food manufacturer. Safety is the paramount concern and strict regulations must be adhered to. Modern processed foods are so safe that any breakdown in food safety standards usually makes front page news.

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Modern Dietary Myth No. 8: Saturated fat is better for you than carbohydrate

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

One of the more commercially driven myths circulating at present is the idea that somehow saturated fat is better for health than carbohydrate. Virtually all the low carb advocates push this argument, but why would they do that?

The changing science

The science relating to how much of what we should eat for good health has certainly evolved in recent decades, but it’s not a simple story.

• In the early 1980s, most health authorities recommended that saturated fat in the diet should be limited to lower heart disease risk.

• At that time trans fats were thought to be neutral but by the 1990s they were considered be as bad as saturated fats. And by the 2000s trans fats were thought to be worse than saturated fat.

• Three decades ago carbohydrate was thought to be the ideal replacement for saturated fat, which led to widespread support for low fat diets. But by the late 2000s scientific support for low fat diets had dropped away.

• Although the early science indicated that unsaturated fats may be the best option to replace saturated fat in the diet somehow they were less preferred to carbohydrate. Their time has now come.

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Modern Diet Myth No. 7: Fluoride is a toxic drug

Posted on March 23, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

Cursed with having studied nutrition at university I had been labouring under the misunderstanding that fluoride was a nutrient that helps prevent tooth decay when consumed in small amounts. But after a quick surf through the net I now realise that fluoride is actually a toxic drug that causes many serious health problems, including thyroid dysfunction, weight gain, osteoporosis, infertility, neurological harm, impaired visual-spatial organisation, early onset of puberty, arthritis, hip fractures, depression and behavioural problems.

Yikes! Why are our so-called health authorities putting this dreadful toxin in our drinking water?

Fluoridation: the pollution of our precious bodily fluids

An enlightened few have known about the dangers of water fluoridation for decades and have tried to warn us. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr Strangelove, there is a telling scene in which General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, ignores a hail of bullets from his own troops and asks a cowering colleague whether he has ever heard about water fluoridation.

Ripper then explains that “… fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face … I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids”.

Of course, General Ripper has totally lost it. Prior to the fluoridation scene he ordered the 34 B52 bombers under his command to make an unprovoked nuclear strike on Russia.

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Modern Diet Myth No. 6: Sugar is really, really bad for you

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

Thank goodness for the World Health Organization’s new report ‘Sugars intake for adults and children’. Now, at last, we have some actual science to go on.

WHO’s record on sugar

The World Health Organization (WHO) is a leading global health agency with a proud history of sound dietary advice, including advice about sugar. In a 1990 report, WHO recommended a limit on intake of ‘free sugars’ of no more than 10% of daily calories, which is about the current average intake of Australian adults. Free sugars means all sugars added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars in honey, fruit juices and syrups.

WHO’s rationale for limiting sugar intake was to lower the risk for tooth decay. No lower limit on intake of free sugars was recommended.

Thirteen years later WHO again looked at the science of sugar and health and found ‘convincing’ evidence that both the amount of free sugars and the frequency of sugar consumption increased the risk for tooth decay. And again WHO recommended a limit of 10% of daily calories.

The 2015 WHO report

In its latest report WHO found … wait for it … that eating too much sugar causes tooth decay and that the intake of free sugars should be limited to … wait for it … less than 10% of daily calories.

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Modern Diet Myth No. 5: The low fat diet was the result of fraud and conspiracy

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

As new scientific evidence has emerged the low fat diet has slowly fallen from favour. But the myth-makers are suggesting the whole thing was a con, born out of fraud and carried along by a conspiracy.

The origins of the low fat diet

The low fat diet had its origins in 1980 with the publication of the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The recommendation to ‘Avoid too much fat, saturated fat and cholesterol’ was intended to lower blood cholesterol and reduce the risk for heart disease. Although the focus was really on lowering saturated fat, it was thought that lowering total fat intake may help prevent some cancers and obesity.

In Australia, the simpler guideline ‘Avoid eating too much fat’ was adopted to aid its communication.

Keys versus Yudkin

The low fat diet had a low key launch. Yet these humble origins are now being re-imagined as the disastrous consequences of a fight to the (professional) death of two of the great nutritionists their era – Ancel Keys and John Yudkin. As an epidemic of heart disease raged in the post-war years Yudkin pointed his finger at sugar. But Keys argued that the effect of different fats on blood cholesterol was the key mechanism affecting heart disease risk, and he won the day.

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Modern Diet Myth No. 4: Fructose turns to fat

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Bill Shrapnel

Fructose – the dietary villain de jour – is currently giving rise to more myths than anything else and they all seem to relate to fat. Fructose supposedly leads to fatty liver and too much fat in the blood. To top it off, fructose is said to be uniquely fattening! Where do we start?

Fat in your liver

Most of the carbohydrate we eat ends up in the bloodstream as either glucose or fructose. The myth goes that glucose is the good sugar as it is used to power the brain, the muscles and most of the cells in the body. And the fructose is the bad sugar which is quickly taken up by the liver and turned into fat, giving rise to fatty liver.

Unfortunately for the myth-makers, no reputable health authority in the world agrees. Fatty liver is certainly a common problem but the experts see it as part of the metabolic syndrome – a cluster of abnormalities linked to central obesity and insulin resistance, where the cells of the body become less sensitive to insulin.

There is no recommended diet for fatty liver. Instead, health authorities encourage people with fatty liver to lose some weight and increase their physical activity, both of which improve insulin resistance.

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