SUGAR ADDICTION
According to the mainstream media, and that includes social media posts in which people blindly share held beliefs up as authority supported facts. Sugar is toxic, addictive and destroying the western world. An obesity crisis once blamed upon fat is now the fault of sugar despite the our knowledge of sugars limited role in adiposity.
The process of de novo lipogenesis (DNL), which is the conversion of carbohydrates into saturated fat in the body raises questions about whether our bodies can even synthesise sufficient saturated fat for optimal health never mind to induced weight gain through increased fatty tissues.
DNL is a Minor Pathway: Under normal conditions, DNL is a relatively minor pathway in humans. On a Western diet, healthy individuals synthesise only about one to two grams of fat per day (men) or three to six grams per day (women during the menstrual cycle's follicular phase). In conditions like obesity, diabetes, and inflammation, DNL may increase to about three to six grams per day. Even on a diet with 70 percent carbohydrates and 15 percent fat (similar to the Kitavan diet), DNL only rises to about ten grams per day. For an average 2500kcal diet, 15% fat intake would be roughly 41 grams of fat per day. Even with 10 grams from DNL it would still be very low.
Dietary vs. Endogenous Saturated Fat: Under most conditions, the amount of saturated fat synthesised endogenously through DNL is much smaller than the amount consumed in the diet, as described above above. The maximum observed value occurs when carbohydrate intake significantly exceeds energy expenditure, allowing for the conversion of excess carbohydrates to fat, potentially reaching up to 500 grams per day. Achieving this consistently is practically impossible.
Limitation of DNL: While humans have the capacity to synthesise more saturated fat through DNL, it is typically limited to around ten grams per day in ordinary conditions. This limitation may be due to the fact that 40 grams of total fat per day from diet is sufficient to provide the required fatty acids for structural roles, or there may be associated costs with DNL that outweigh its benefits.
Energy Cost of DNL: One of the major costs associated with DNL is the consumption of energy carried by NADPH, which is a form of niacin (vitamin B3). NADPH plays a crucial role in various metabolic processes, including the synthesis of fats and cholesterol, antioxidant defence, detoxification, and nutrient recycling. Excessive DNL could potentially strain the energy resources needed for these vital processes.
In summary, while our bodies have the ability to synthesise saturated fat from carbohydrates, this process is usually minor and kept under control, possibly because the energy cost of DNL could affect other important metabolic functions. I also emphasise that for most people, dietary sources of saturated fat are more significant than endogenous synthesis through DNL. However, it's important to note that individual dietary and metabolic factors can influence these processes, and more research may be needed to fully understand their implications for health.
So many people on Facebook and in the real world keep mentioning sugar addiction, its drug like properties and the relief they feel when they kick the habit makes it seem like sugar is the new meth or tobacco. Yet unlike both those substances we actually need sugar to perform bodily functions and to survive.
Here is a little sugar addiction test for you. Find some sugar, this admittedly may be a little hard if you already believe you have eradicated it from your life. Rule number one of addiction therapy must surely be, avoid the triggers. Anyway, get yourself some sugar, not donuts, not cake, just pure table sugar. Or to give it its proper name, sucrose. A disaccharide combination of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose.
Eat a spoonful and then see how much you feel like having another. You may eat a couple but you will not be consumed by an all encompassing desire to keep shovelling it down your throat. Whilst it is not unpleasant, you would not want much and you would not want to do it often. Does that sound like an addictive substance? Does it sound like a drug in which you could become dependent upon, like heroin or cocaine? The addictive aspect that people consider so problematic is what we should probably refer to as cravings/hunger/hypoglycaemia.
Why would we be craving sweetness? Hunger and if someone wants to crowdfund me through my PhD I still aim to finally try and get some proof about our insatiable hunger. In the meantime here are a few of my theories:
We are hungry, and it seems we are eating less than we have been previously recorded as eating. As sugar/glucose is our primary source of energy (ATP) and it would seem logical that we crave sweetness when we are under eating.
Foods made with combinations of sugar, fat, and salt can be hard to resist and in turn make us crave more. The food industry knows this and employ people that understand the psychological and biological mechanisms that make us crave more of their foods. If you want more on this fascinating topic please have a look in my Amazon store (Diet Research Section) for a great book about food industry strategy.
Davina's "scary science bit" mentioned the World Health Organisation's (WHO) guidelines on sugar from 2002. A quick venture online and you can find the latest edition of this highly scientific document. I also posted about Jamie, the WHO and the SACN here.
Within that document (page 12 if I remember correctly) we can see the quality of evidence that was used to determine such strong recommendations.
As you can see, Davina's book has a lot of sugar contained within the recipes. This caused a bit of an online backlash from both the pro-sugar camp, mocking the fact that sugar was openly used, and the anti-sugar camp who were disgusted that it wasn't extreme enough. Davina fought back via Twitter and pointed out that it was a plan that ended up sugar free, and not sugar free from the outset.
So, do we really need sugar? It appears we do, let's look at our most vital organ, the brain. Your brain almost exclusively relies upon glucose, except during prolonged starvation (as encouraged by most media sources). It consumes around 120g daily which is about 420 calories so it would seem daft to avoid it when our survival is dependent upon it.
All forms of digestible carbohydrate must be broken down into monosaccharide (simple sugar) in order to be used by your body. From your local expensive honey right the way through to your slice of wholewheat bread. It has to breakdown into monosaccharide in order to be utilised.
So all the carbohydrate based foods in Davina's book end up broken down into simple sugar anyway, so why the big fuss about eradicating it from our diets? Most likely it is just another excuse to make money for an industry focused on profit rather than scientific evidence.
Note: your body can catabolise tissue and fat (although it prefers to hold onto fat) in order to produce its own supply but I thought I would avoid making it too much of a "scary science bit" and leave that for a later blog post about gluconeogenisis, unless Davina beats me to it.
To conclude, sugar is not addictive, it is as essential as the air you breath. Food processed by industry to contain the right combination of sugars and fats makes you crave them, as does being on a restrictive diet, even an unintentional one. If you're going to claim a food is addictive, have some evidence and clarify exactly what the food is, not just generic terms. Also be prepared to be proven wrong.
