Unhealthy and high in calories: Sugar has a bad reputation and it’s getting worse and worse. Health organizations such as the WHO advise cutting down on sugar consumption. But a new study shows that there is probably no reason for it.
We must once again break a lance for the sugar. Because sugar, as the “devil on the plate”, is held responsible for almost all widespread diseases, obesity and many other evils, although science has not yet provided any evidence in the “hardest currency” of research (i.e. causal evidence).
However, a new, large, independent study published in the renowned leading specialist magazine “The American Journal of Nutrition” has just made it unmistakably clear: There is a lack of scientific evidence for the mantra-like recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO) to drastically reduce sugar consumption. Even outside the “research box” you can think freely about two other essential areas of life.
Basically, the ecotrophological universal credo applies to all questions about “healthy nutrition”: You don’t know anything specific. Why? Quite simply: Nutritional science is in a pitiful position because this branch of research can never provide evidence in the sense of causal evidence, i.e. no cause-effect evidence – but only produces very weak, waxy soft correlations (static connections).
Uwe Knop was born in 1972. He is a graduate ecotrophologist, author of several nutrition books and PR consultant in the field of medicine.
And these (often arbitrarily constructed) statistics allow at most hypotheses and assumptions – which is mostly like reading a crystal ball. The causes underlying this blatant lack of evidence are manifold, and the limitations that prevent clear statements are systemic and cannot be remedied. Everything has been said often enough about this complex of topics, so that in this article only one current, industry-independent large-scale study should be mentioned, which again confirms: There is a lack of scientific evidence for the WHO recommendation to drastically reduce sugar consumption.
The summer holidays will start soon and before the beach holiday many want to put on the right bathing figure. But a diet so close to the trip is counterproductive. In our free webinar on Thursday, June 30, from 7 p.m., nutritionist Uwe Knop explains why that is and what you should do better to cut a good figure on the beach. GET YOUR FREE TICKET HERE!
Actually, one could use both the “panic
And in general, the question arises: Who eats pure sugar? No one. But about pure sugar, i.e. the simple sugar glucose, you should know the following – and think about it free-spiritedly without thinking blocks:
The subheading above may sound a bit polemically pathetic – but it is like this: Without the purely plant-based production of glucose there would be no oxygen-rich atmosphere and therefore (almost) no life on earth – because photosynthesis is the most important biological process our planet. Photosynthesis, of course, everyone knows. As a reminder and to refresh your knowledge of what the inner-earth “little green plants” are doing: They use solar energy to build up energy-rich substances. Specifically: sugar. More specifically: glucose.
Low-energy carbon dioxide, water and light are converted into oxygen and glucose. By the way, oxygen is considered a plant “waste product” – in contrast to the target product sugar. This and other high-energy substances built from it (as well as the biomass in toto) then form the beginning of the food chain to all other living beings that are dependent on this “primary energy source” – and this includes us humans.
To put it bluntly: the aforementioned complex of topics is not about using photosynthesis to underline, underpin or even confirm the massively gaping gap in the lack of scientific causal evidence for “bad sugar” – no, the two have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with each other . Each world is a world unto itself. It’s just a matter of giving food for thought, in order to ponder free-spiritedly how one – quite personally – classifies this elementary-essential-biological process in one’s world of thoughts and “truth matrix”.
A few molecular facts should also be provided: Our “normal” sugar, i.e. the trickling white from the packaging, is sucrose. Half of this double molecule consists of the two simple sugars glucose (“dextrose”) and fructose (“fruit sugar”). Like the glucose already described above, fructose also occurs “naturally in nature” – especially in fruit.
Another sugar occurs naturally in the breasts of breastfeeding mothers: the most natural and best of all foods for human babies is arguably breast milk. That too needs to be considered in this context. There are no two opinions in science here.
One of the main components of the “sweet baby juice” is sugar, specifically milk sugar (lactose). So is breast milk somehow unhealthy or even hazardous to health? No, quite the opposite – and not only because of a lack of causal evidence, but simply because of common sense.
Now you could start the tiresome differentiation discussion again “Yes, but lactose is not ‘normal’ sugar…” But that doesn’t help at all. Because: Regardless of the fact that both types of sugar are (differently) sweet, provide the same kcal energy and can hardly be observed separately in correlation studies, they are both “half siblings”, i.e. half identical: Because both sucrose and lactose exist as double sugars (disaccharides), each half consisting of: glucose.
Let’s summarize:
Everyone can and should now “think everything together” for themselves, please. Ergo: Have fun with culinary pondering and epicurean philosophizing!
