Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large serving sizes of sugary drinks is yet another effort to curtail the dangers that come along with high sugar intake — namely, obesity.
“There is an obesity epidemic in New York and across the nation,” says Constance Brown-Riggs, Registered Dietitian and National Spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Every day, I counsel people in my office with type 2 diabetes, one of the first consequences of the obesity epidemic.”
“The healthcare cost of these ‘twin epidemics’ is increasing, while life expectancy is decreasing,” she adds.
Obesity is now said to be on a par with cigarette smoking and second-hand smoke. The difference? Its effects now impact a younger and younger population.
Protecting the kids
Bloomberg’s concept of linking sugar to obesity is not new. The medical and nutritional community has long sang the woes of sugary beverages, especially among children.
A 32-ounce “super sized” Hi-C orange drink from McDonald’s provides 350 calories and 94 grams of sugar in one serving. Based on a 2,000-calorie diet, and three meals a day, that’s more than half of the allotted calories for an entire meal — and one-third of the recommended amount of sugar for the whole day. Increasing calories from sugar can lead to increasing pounds.
Wendy’s Fanta and Pibb Xtra beverages are similar. In a large serving — 40 ounces — of each, comes 360 and 320 calories, respectively.
These proposed changes for New York City’s beverage sizes has the potential to affect the lower-income areas of the city and children the most.
“Typically, the corner store — which is easily accessible — doesn’t carry low fat or fat free milk or 100 percent fruit juice,” Brown-Riggs says of lower-income neighborhoods. “And if those beverages are available, they’re priced so high, the low-income family just can’t afford to buy them.”
A poll earlier this year out of the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital revealed that children from lower-income households drank twice the recommended amount of juice — and its sugar content — per day.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting fruit juice to one serving a day for children six years of age and under. Yet, nearly half of parents whose annual household incomes were less than $30,000 gave their children two or more cups of juice per day.
More than ten years ago, the AAP published a policy statement acknowledging that although fruit juice is seen as nutritious, there were harmful effects of excessive fruit juice consumption in children. These risks involved malnutrition, overnutrition, diarrhea and tooth decay. The AAP expressed renewed support for this standpoint this year.
However, Brown-Riggs cautions parents against substituting sugary beverages with diet drinks or artificial sweeteners.
“We don’t want parents to go from one extreme to another and start swapping sugar-sweetened beverages for ‘diet’ beverages” she says. “The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans encourages consumers to reduce their intake of foods and beverages with added sugars and replace them with more healthful options like water, moderate servings of 100-percent fruit juice and low-fat or fat-free milk.”
The FDA considers artificial sweeteners safe, but research is limited and does not clearly show harms or benefits in children.
The fight continues
Many wonder if this ban can actually decrease obesity rates and lower BMI scores around New York City.
A 2006 study showed that after a focused intervention, adolescents with higher BMI scores who cut back on sugary sodas and juice lowered their overall body weight.
“However, there is conflicting research on whether these types of bans actually result in behavior change that leads to positive health outcomes,” says Brown-Riggs.
Two days ago, the FDA rejected a petition from the Corn Refiners Association to change the name “high-fructose corn syrup” — which has come under scrutiny lately — to “corn sugar.” In the rejection letter, Michael Landa of the FDA asserted that the sweetener should not be classified as a sugar, and that changing the name could be misleading and a public health concern for people with certain health conditions.
In fact, according to Dr. Robert Lustig and his team at the University of California, San Francisco, chronic exposure to one type of sugar in particular — fructose — causes many of the same long-term health problems as alcohol.
Earlier this year, that same team published a controversial paper in the journal Nature alleging that sugar, not fat, is to blame for high blood pressure and heart disease.
Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital whose research focuses on the underlying causes of obesity. He has very vocal about his opinion that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse, and should be thought of like cigarettes and alcohol.