Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: This is Christian Seger. So we recently went to the
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works kitchen and we looked at the nutrition
Speaker 1: facts label on some of the food there. We looked
Speaker 1: at cherry coke, for instance, it has forty two grams
Speaker 1: of sugar. Then we looked at Mountain dew and it
Speaker 1: had forty six grams in a can. Okay, Well, something
Speaker 1: that's always bothered me is how there isn't a percent
Speaker 1: daily value listed for sugar. For instance, thirty nine grams
Speaker 1: of sugar and a can of coke seems like a lot,
Speaker 1: but is it? On Mayen, the Food and Drug Administration
Speaker 1: introduced an updated Nutrition Facts label, which they said reflected
Speaker 1: new scientific information, and among the changes were updated serving sizes,
Speaker 1: calories in a way bigger font, and an entirely new
Speaker 1: line for added sugars that also includes a percent daily value.
Speaker 1: But let's back up, why does it matter how much
Speaker 1: sugar a person consumes? Well, Sugar, whether it's natural or added,
Speaker 1: is a type of carbohydrate that our bodies used for energy. Fruits, vegetables,
Speaker 1: and dairy foods can naturally contain sugar. But the FDA
Speaker 1: defines added sugars as those that are either added during
Speaker 1: the processing of foods, sugars from syrups and honey, and
Speaker 1: sugars from concentrated fruit or vegetable juices that are in
Speaker 1: excess of what would be expected from the same volume
Speaker 1: of one fruit or vegetable juice of the same type.
Speaker 1: That that that last bit was a little bit long anyways.
Speaker 1: A food science expert we talked to named Marion Nestley
Speaker 1: from New York University explains why added sugars can be
Speaker 1: harmful and they dilute the nutritional quality of whatever they're
Speaker 1: added to. They give you calories, but they don't give
Speaker 1: you any additional nutrients. The f d A recommends limiting
Speaker 1: added sugar intake to no more than ten percent of
Speaker 1: a person's total daily calories. For adults, this equals about
Speaker 1: fifty grams or twelve point five teaspoons of sugar per day,
Speaker 1: in other words, a little more than a can of
Speaker 1: mountain dew. The World Health Organization recommends even less, just
Speaker 1: five percent of a person's daily calories, which equal about
Speaker 1: twenty five grams or six teaspoons per day, or one
Speaker 1: package of peanut M and M's Now, for reference, the
Speaker 1: average American adult consumes seventy five grams of added sugar
Speaker 1: per day, or about nineteen teaspoons. So where does all
Speaker 1: this added sugar come from? If your first answer is soda,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised to know that American soda consumption
Speaker 1: has steadily decreased in the past fifteen years or so.
Speaker 1: The truth is that sugar can be found in just
Speaker 1: about everything we eat and drink, but it's often disguised
Speaker 1: under other names like glucose, fructoast, malttoast, dextros basically anything
Speaker 1: that ends with oas cane juice, cane syrup, high fructoast,
Speaker 1: corn syrup, cane sugar, corn sweetener, molasses, malt syrup, invert sugar,
Speaker 1: or fruit juice concentrates. Okay, that was another long one.
Speaker 1: Manufacturers list them in this way to break up the
Speaker 1: amount and make it appear like there's less overall sugar
Speaker 1: in a product, and that's one of the reasons the
Speaker 1: f d A is updating the nutrition label so consumers
Speaker 1: are aware of how much added sugar is in their food.
Speaker 1: If you're going to be eating helpfully, you want to
Speaker 1: keep the amount of sugar down, not just for reasons
Speaker 1: of nutrients, but also because there's so much evidence that
Speaker 1: people who eat a lot of sugar have a higher
Speaker 1: risk for obesity, type two diabetes, heart disease, and so forth.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, why hasn't the public been better
Speaker 1: informed to answer that? We need to go back in time,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk to Christina Kerns, a post
Speaker 1: doctoral fellow at the University of California in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixties, a lot of attention in the scientific
Speaker 1: community was directed to trying to understand the dietary factors
Speaker 1: in the American diet and how they might be linked
Speaker 1: to coronary heart disease. American men were dying of coronary
Speaker 1: heart disease at higher rates than other countries, and so
Speaker 1: we thought our specific American diet might have something to
Speaker 1: do with that. Kurns, along with co authors Laura Schmidt
Speaker 1: and stand Glance, recently published a paper in jama Internal
Speaker 1: Medicine revealing that the sugar industry sponsored research that purposefully
Speaker 1: singled out fat as the dietary cause of heart disease,
Speaker 1: while downplaying the evidence that sugar consumption was a factor.
Speaker 1: As more evidence began to link sucross consumption to coronary
Speaker 1: heart disease. The sugar industry got involved with the research
Speaker 1: themselves in an attempt to discredit some of the evidence,
Speaker 1: and I believe direct attention away from that research onto
Speaker 1: the research linking fat to coronary heart disease. Founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three by members of the U S sugar industry,
Speaker 1: the Sugar Research Foundation was dedicated to communicating and supporting
Speaker 1: sugar's dietary role to the public. It later evolved into
Speaker 1: what is currently called the Sugar Association. The documents that
Speaker 1: we have, the industry is certainly talking about how to
Speaker 1: protect market share, so the Sugar Research Foundation was created
Speaker 1: to protect sales. Now, industry sponsored research is nothing new,
Speaker 1: but the effects of the Sugar Research Foundation's manipulation were
Speaker 1: far reaching. When the US government first published their dietary
Speaker 1: guidelines for Americans in night, they recommended avoiding too much fat,
Speaker 1: saturated fat, and cholesterol, which they linked to a greater
Speaker 1: chance of having a heart attack. They did recommend limiting
Speaker 1: sugar intake, but only because it could cause tooth decay.
Speaker 1: Even today, go walk into any grocery store and look
Speaker 1: at the so called healthy products. They usually advertise themselves
Speaker 1: as being low fat or low cholesterol, but they say
Speaker 1: almost nothing about their sugar content. After the GM article
Speaker 1: came out, the Sugar Association released a statement in which
Speaker 1: they said, we acknowledge that the Sugar Research Foundation should
Speaker 1: have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities. However,
Speaker 1: when the studies in question were published, funding disclosures and
Speaker 1: transparency standards were not the norm they are today. I
Speaker 1: think it was interesting that they sort of acknowledged that
Speaker 1: they should have been more transparent. Actually didn't expect them
Speaker 1: to to say that. However, you know that that doesn't
Speaker 1: exonerate the industry from from their actions. Despite the manipulation
Speaker 1: by the Sugar Research Foundation, whether added sugar contributes to
Speaker 1: coronary heart disease is still hotly debated. What you have
Speaker 1: is an enormous amount of evidence from correlation and association
Speaker 1: that people who eat diets that are high in sugar
Speaker 1: tend to have a greater risk for obesity, types of diabetes,
Speaker 1: and heart disease. The best thing that you can do
Speaker 1: look at the labels, know what's in your food and
Speaker 1: how much, And if you're worried about added sugar. A
Speaker 1: simple solution is just to avoid prepackaged food by fresh
Speaker 1: ingredients and cook them yourself. That way, you know exactly
Speaker 1: what's going into the food you eat. So if you're
Speaker 1: wondering why you haven't seen the new nutrition Facts label yet,
Speaker 1: it's because manufacturers have until July to comply with the changes,
Speaker 1: and if a manufacturer makes less than ten million dollars
Speaker 1: a year in annual food sales, they'll have another year
Speaker 1: to make this change. Check out the brain stuff channel
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.