Is Fat and Not Sugar to Blame for Obesity?

The vast amount of sugars consumed in the modern Western diet that is contained in processed foods and sweetened drinks is creating obesity and other medical problems such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. That is the current thinking. But what if this is incorrect?

Results of a sizable review of over 132, 500 people across Britain by scientists at Glasgow University or college shows that sugar has contributed little to expanding waist lines. This obviously goes against current thinking on the causes of being heavy.

Published in the World Journal of Epidemiology, the study results show that overweight women and men ate 18 per cent more fats than people of normal weight.

The study found that sugar accounted for 22 per cent of their energy intake in contrast to 23. 4 percent of slimmer volunteers in the study.

These results not in favor of blaming sugar for the weight crisis. If they are right, matters will get worse when the expected new health suggestions telling people to eat more fat and less sugar come in. Generally there is also the opportunity that foods containing sweets will be taxed.

What can be made of the Glasgow University analysis results?

The study researchers analysed the dietary practices of 132, 479 men and women involved in a research project called 'UK Biobank', a sizable database of medical data and cells samples. They looked at the sorts of foods creating the daily energy the consumption of the volunteers.

The trouble is usually that the foods eaten by the overweight people included 'unhealthy' fats that are common in processed foods.

Unhealthy calories from fats, sugars and proteins are generally not equal. Excess weight gain can be triggered by eating metabolically dangerous calories such as total carbohydrates, which is the overall carbohydrates minus fibre.

The approaching new health suggestions will be about eating 'healthy' fats such as those occurring in ovum, avocados, coconuts, walnuts, and in products such as milk, cheese and spread from grass-fed cows. Not any doubt the diets of the overweight people in the study consisted of unhealthy food, pizzas, processed convenience foods and the like.

The Glasgow study is a welcome conjunction with the obesity debate, but for draw the summary that all fats cause obesity, and that sugars is not to pin the consequence on, is actually simplistic and a possible dangerous affirmation.

Clearly further research should to be done, but the current health suggestions telling visitors to limit soaked 'healthy' fat intake and eat lots of sugars seem to be as the origin cause of today's overweight crisis.