Sickeningly Sweet: Does Sugar Cause Chronic Disease? No.

Abstract

Sugars have emerged as 1 of the most important public health concerns. Special attention has focused on the fructose moiety of sugars owing to its unique metabolic and endocrinologic responses. Low-quality ecologic studies ( 1 Bray G.A. Nielsen S.J. Popkin B.M. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. Am J Clin Nutr. 2004; 794 (Erratum in Am J Clin Nutr 2004;804:1090): 537-543 Google Scholar , 2 Basu S. Yoffe P. Hills N. Lustig R.H. The relationship of sugar to population-level diabetes prevalence: An econometric analysis of repeated cross-sectional data. PLoS ONE. 2013; 82: e57873 Crossref Scopus (256) Google Scholar , 3 Goran M.I. Ulijaszek S.J. Ventura E.E. High fructose corn syrup and diabetes prevalence: A global perspective. Glob Pub Health. 2013; 81: 55-64 Crossref Scopus (144) Google Scholar ), animal models of overfeeding at levels of exposure far beyond mean population levels of intake ( 4 Sievenpiper J.L. de Souza R.J. Kendall C.W. Jenkins D.J. Is fructose a story of mice but not men?. J Am Diet Assoc. 2011; 1112: 219-220 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (38) Google Scholar ) and select human interventions lacking control for energy ( 5 Lustig R.H. Mulligan K. Noworolski S.M. et al. Isocaloric fructose restriction and metabolic improvement in children with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2016; 242: 453-460 Crossref Scopus (119) Google Scholar ) have been used to implicate fructose-containing sugars in the epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Although experimental models have been invoked to offer plausible biochemical mechanisms to support these positions, whereby fructose acts as an unregulated substrate for de novo lipogenesis, depletes intracellular adenosine triphosphate and impairs satiety signalling through insulin, leptin and ghrelin ( 6 Lustig R.H. Schmidt L.A. Brindis C.D. Public health: The toxic truth about sugar. Nature. 2012; 482: 27-29 Crossref PubMed Scopus (535) Google Scholar , 7 Lustig R.H. Fructose: It's “alcohol without the buzz.”. Adv Nutr. 2013; 42: 226-235 Crossref Scopus (137) Google Scholar , 8 Johnson R.J. Perez-Pozo S.E. Sautin Y.Y. et al. Hypothesis: Could excessive fructose intake and uric acid cause type 2 diabetes?. Endocr Rev. 2009; 301: 96-116 Crossref Scopus (381) Google Scholar , 9 Johnson R.J. Nakagawa T. Sanchez-Lozada L.G. et al. Sugar, uric acid, and the etiology of diabetes and obesity. Diabetes. 2013; 62: 3307-3315 Crossref PubMed Scopus (480) Google Scholar ), the clinical translation of these mechanisms remains in question. Erratum to ‘Sickeningly Sweet: Does Sugar Cause Chronic Disease? No’ (Canadian Journal of Diabetes, Volume 40 [2016] Pages 287–295)Canadian Journal of DiabetesVol. 40Issue 6PreviewThe publisher regrets that the declaration of interest for this article was not included. The acknowledgment should have read: Full-Text PDF