An Opening Statement In Defence Of Sugar

Have you been told Sugar is the devil? Recently a good friend of mine tagged me in a facebook video, a fairly well produced vilification of Coca-Cola and subsequently sugar.

This video went on to make claims such as; sugar is more addictive than cocaine, it’s consumption is linked to cancer and a multitude of other mortality causes. There are legitimate arguments for reducing sugar content in the diet - notably how it increases the palatability and energy density of food.

However the way this argument was positioned, as often is the case – simplifies a more complex challenge that we face.

‘Sugar is a drug’ – was expectedly and unsurprisingly thrown into this mix of arguments, where the presenter in the video seemingly chooses to avoid clear distinction between Coca-Cola and sugar. The comparison is made between sugar being ‘more addictive than cocaine’.

Sugar’s consumption, or more appropriately - ‘foods high in sugar’ may lead to a greater dopamine response. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that we can link to pleasure and reward. Exercise can also lead to an elevation in dopamine, and while not to detract away from the relationship between dopamine and addiction, simply attenuating a dopamine response does not make the stimulus ‘bad’.

The dopamine stimulating effects of certain foods are important to know - as it helps us understand why these foods may be desirable but not as satiating, however this doesn’t mean you can compare it to cocaine, especially when the literature on this is being misrepresented.

Often Hoebel is cited. Even if we could agree that he adequately demonstrated sugar is more addictive in rodents than cocaine, the translation from rodent to human is often fraught with errors and disparity. His research only shows that cocaine can increase dopamine levels in the brain in a manner similar to food reward.

What’s important to be aware of in this research is that rodents were selected that had a preference for sugar, more so, these addictive type behaviours are only observable when rodents are given intermittent access to sugar, when they have ad Libitum access we are not able to observe these same behaviours: if we translated this to humans - we don't live lives where we have intermittent access to sugar - have a consistent access to sugar, even if it’s not in our immediate environment - we have the conscious awareness that it’s an accessible product to us, that would only require a trip to the shop to collect.

What’s also interesting, with an addictive drug - if you add something that makes you feel sick – this shouldn’t diminish your desire to consume the substance. With sugar (in the case of rodents) they preferred not to have the sugar if the ‘sickness’ additive was there. This draws a clear distinction between addictive drugs such as cocaine, and sugar. ‘Sugar addiction - the state of the science’. 2016

If you’re interested in reading more about cravings, this paper will also highlight the differences between types of cravings with food and drugs - differing in intensity, frequency and duration.

There is also literature dating back to 1939, showing in rats - if you have an unlimited availability of sugar water, at greater concentrations – consumption will increase, until eventually you observe diminishing consumption as the rodents opt for a non-sugar alternative. If sugar is truly an addictive substance in and of itself, we would expect to see this correlation continue to increase.

I am certainly not here to defend sweets every day, all day. But it’s incredibly disempowering to people to position sugar consumption in isolation as the root cause of; obesity, diabetes and mortality. People need to be armed with the truth - of which may be more complex - in order to navigate their lives and allow flexibility within their nutrition that facilitates sustainable positive change - inclusive of ‘indulgent’ foods.

What we can see in the literature is that highly palatable foods are more likely to cause over consumption, the foods most dopamine inducing are not just sugar - but above this - foods high in fat and sugar. These foods can lead to addictive type behaviours, especially when we become familiar with their; packaging, smells, texture, sounds etc. These are foods such as; donuts, ice cream, chocolate etc.

This slide from Stephan Guyenet’s presentation at MacNutrition Live, demonstrates the findings in Markus et al. Appetite 114:64. 2017 , in which they took 1495 university students to examine whether foods containing mainly sugar lead to addiction like problems. Check out this quote from the results of the study:

“The majority of respondents experienced these problems for combined high-fat savoury (30%) and high-fat sweet (25%) foods, whereas only a minority experienced such problems for low-fat/savoury (2%) and mainly sugar-containing foods (5%).”

These foods are satisfying, calorie dense, hyper-palatable, probably not as satiating and contribute to our dietary intakes, and we know a consistently hyper-caloric diet - of which is easier to achieve through a diet predominant in high calorie foods - will eventually lead to weight gain - over time if this weight gain is not monitored - we can lead ourselves into obesity. Obesity does elevate mortality risk, and in fact is likely a bigger influencer upon diabetes causation and risk.

With this knowledge, people are able to make informed choices, to not only - have permission to include indulgent type foods with minimal nutritional value ad to utilise sugary foods a performance fuel in specific occasions, but also – to avoid pursuing extremely rigid protocols that are unsustainable and distract from the opportunity to follow a flexible, health delivering lifestyle.

It’s not free of responsibility, and diets that moderate sugar consumption, along with other things, tend to be health promoting. Sugar being straw-manned as the cause of many of the public health challenges we face, does a disservice to the interventions we need to take to fix these issues.

Before we act as judge, jury and executioner to Tate and Lyle, the honest truth is, the evidence points to a broader path.

Would love to hear your thoughts, if you have any comments or questions please write them below or you can email me: louis@strengthvitality.com

Louis