The Flaws in the New Lustig Sugar Study
by Garth Davis, MD on October 30, 2015
Dr. Robert Lustig did a study that was recently released that has the media screaming that sugar is killing us.
No question junk food is bad for you. I would never advocate pure sugar. The problem is that this creates carb fear.
What I really cannot understand is how the media, and people, can question the link between meat and cancer, but accept sugar without question. The science for the WHO recs were based on 800 studies many of them lasting many years.
Lustig’s study used 43 kids. They asked them about their baseline diet. (People always give healthier diet histories than they actually eat.)
They then put them on the same calorie but substituted starches and complex carbs for the sugar for 9 days. That’s it. 9 days.
There was no control group!
The kids had improvements in cholesterol and blood pressure BUT they also lost weight. Likely they understated their calorie intake pre study and then actually had a calorie drop during the study. So were the improvements from the change in diet or the weight loss?
I mention this NOT to tell you to eat sugar. I have looked at the literature on sugar extensively and it is murkier than you would think – but it still has led me to cut sugar out of my diet. Sugar being junk food. Still downing lots of fruits and starches.
The reason I bring this up is that the science behind the harms of animal protein is extensive. There is bench top research showing mechanism of action, randomized controlled trials, and there are long term multi variate regression analysis on hundreds of thousands of people. So I guess I don’t understand how the media can say, “Don’t eat sugar, but the science behind meat is weak, so eat your class 1 carcinogen.”