People will switch to fatty foods if sugar is cut from diet

Experts have warned that consumers may compensate for a reduction of sugar in their diet by consuming more fatty foods, which could undermine attempts to reduce obesity levels in the UK.

Dr David Benton from the Department of Psychology at the University of Wales in Swansea has raised the spectre of sugar becoming “demonised” as “the next tobacco”, suggesting that pressure to reduce sugar levels in food could result in people subconsciously switching to foods with higher saturated fat content.

“Diets high in fat are more of a problem than diets high in carbohydrate,” he told a seminar on health and wellbeing organised by British Sugar.

He presented the results of experiments on young people, which showed that when sugar levels in the diet were reduced, individuals adjusted their eating habits to raise their intake of fatty foods. “People tend to replace sugar with fat-containing foods - presumably because they taste good,” said Benton. “The weight of evidence is that sugar is not the primary concern. Levels of protein, fibre and water in foods predict satiety.”

Research also showed that the use of artificial sweeteners only had a short-term effect on people’s diets, he added. While there may be a reduction in calorie intake in the first day or so, over time individuals adjusted their diets to compensate through the consumption of other foods. “This has got to be taken on board,” he said. “The replacement of sugars with artificial sweeteners will not address the problem.”

Jeya Henry, professor of human nutrition at Oxford Brookes University, supported Benton’s view about sugar and added: “The biggest challenge of the 21st century will be what foods change satiety. Sucrose is a very powerful satiety agent that we are failing to exploit.” He suggested that the form in which food was consumed had a big influence on intake levels, with more sucrose tending to be consumed as drinks than solid foods. He attributed this finding to a natural tendency of the body to rehydrate itself. “I think the question of whether liquid calories are the same as solid calories is going to haunt us.”

At the same seminar, nutritionist Sigrid Gibson, director of Sig-Nurture, questioned the trend to unnecessarily fortify some products aimed at children. New research, she said, showed that in most cases children were already getting their recommended nutritional intake (RNI) for vitamins and minerals. Looking at all nutrients together it was clear that only a few were marginal in the diet - mainly the minerals, but also vitamin A, said Gibson.

However, where micronutrient deficiencies - such as iron deficiency - were a concern in certain sections of the population these were often not being addressed by manufacturers because of processing problems or because of a negative impact on product taste, which made fortification unacceptable, she added.

Gibson also questioned common assumptions about the inverse relationship between sugar content and micronutrient intake. “It is not inevitable that a high sugar intake has an impact on micronutrient inadequacy,” she said. Provided the sugar intake was not excessive, a range of sugar intakes were compatible with micronutrient adequacy, she added. The problem might lie with high sugar consumers eating fewer nutrient-rich foods.

Micronutrient ‘dilution’, added Gibson, became a nutritional problem when people were just eating very little; especially where a high proportion of this was fatty or sugary food not associated with micronutrients. “Fortification - depending on your persuasion - can either be seen as boosting the nutrient intake or masking the adverse impact of sugars,” she concluded. “We should not see fortification as the panacea.”