Is Decades Old Sugar Intake Behind Today’s Obesity Epidemic?
By Stewart Lonky, M.D.
Theories about obesity's root cause abound. While I've often
spoken about obesity's multifactorial nature, there's an emerging theory that
our childhood eating habits play a critical role in what we eventually
weigh as adults.
Indeed, the new theory suggests that current US adult obesity rates, which hover around 40 percent, are the result of dietary changes that took place decades earlier.
Specifically, the researchers cited excess sugar consumption, particularly sugar-sweetened beverages, in childhood as a significant factor in the current obesity epidemic.
There’s just one problem with this theory, however.
Sugar consumption has steadily declined over the past 20 years. While global data is sketchy, a 2014 study in the journal Nutrition Research Reviews found a similar trend for a waning sweet tooth, concluding that “in the majority of population comparisons, estimated dietary sugars intake is either stable or decreasing in both absolute and relative terms.”
Indeed, the new theory suggests that current US adult obesity rates, which hover around 40 percent, are the result of dietary changes that took place decades earlier.
Specifically, the researchers cited excess sugar consumption, particularly sugar-sweetened beverages, in childhood as a significant factor in the current obesity epidemic.
There’s just one problem with this theory, however.
Sugar consumption has steadily declined over the past 20 years. While global data is sketchy, a 2014 study in the journal Nutrition Research Reviews found a similar trend for a waning sweet tooth, concluding that “in the majority of population comparisons, estimated dietary sugars intake is either stable or decreasing in both absolute and relative terms.”
I should mention this study was conducted under the auspices of the World Sugar Organization, a body funded by sugar manufacturers. But it is a well-designed study and does pull data from outside sources.
So, the paradox here is that while US sugar consumption has steadily declined for two decades, obesity rates have gone in the opposite direction.
How do we explain the discrepancy?
The researchers believe that high-sugar diets in childhood might have long-lasting effects. To test their theory, the researchers modeled the increase in US adult obesity over the last 20 years as a legacy of the increased excess sugar consumption measured among children in the 1970s and 1980s.
The researchers tested their model using national obesity data collected between 1990 and 2004 by the CDC. They compared those obesity rates with annual sugar consumption in the US since 1970. The model also roughly captures how obesity rates vary by age group among children and teenagers.
The results, said the researchers, "suggest that the dietary habits learned by children 30 or 40 years ago could explain the adult obesity crisis that emerged years later."
While the study findings can't fully explain the scope and scale of the obesity epidemic, they remind us that eating habits form early in life. It's incumbent on all of us to shape our children's eating behavior and help them make wise food choices.
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