Publications
Partners
The human race is in danger of extinction: levels of obesity and its associated diseases of lifestyle soar ever higher with each passing month. Soon 100% of the populations of affluent and poor nations alike will be overweight or obese.
Worldwide, governments and regulatory agencies, public watchdogs and health professionals are scrabbling to find a solution. And, let’s face it, we do need a solution - as soon as possible.
In the meantime, many of the players are looking for a "fat scapegoat". We need something to blame for this epidemic. Lately, sugar and refined carbohydrates have been likened to be "just as bad as booze" or "as dangerous as opioid drugs".
A popular pastime
Humans like the idea of one factor, person or food being responsible for all our ills, which we can then single out as a "scapegoat". Sacrificing one villain as a scapegoat fits in well with our idea that there's an easy and fast fix for something as complex as obesity.
But trying to blame one food, especially sugar, for the world's obesity problem is probably oversimplifying matters. The question we need to ask ourselves is if the instant fix of shunning sugar is actually going to work?
Probably not - simply because there are few other fields more complex than nutrition.
A complex problem
The tendency to gain weight is governed by hundreds of different factors:
- The foods we eat (low-energy vs. obesogenic foods)
- The quantities of the foods we eat
- The combinations of foods we eat
- Our genetic makeup
- How much physical activity we do
- Our emotional makeup
- Hormones in our bodies
- Hormones in our environment (i.e. oestrogen disruptors like triclosan and triclocarban, which are used in popular antiseptics and disinfectants and which enter the water supply where it's transferred into plants and animals, and eventually into our food chain)
- Prior dietary history, going as far back as the womb (undernourished, underweight babies are vulnerable to all the diseases of lifestyle, including obesity)
- Hundreds of as yet unidentified factors, for example virus infections that may trigger obesity
In view of the above, anyone who proposes to solve the problem of obesity by "declaring war on sugar" is probably being highly optimistic.
Thrifty gene alert
The earth’s population has exceeded 7 billion people, and is growing daily. This intense overcrowding, coupled with the effects of global warming, threatens our food supplies. It's quite possible that these factors have triggered an emergency response in our "thrifty genes" to store as much fat as we can for the lean times that lie ahead for our species. Someone who has 200kg of fat tucked into his or her storage depots will last a lot longer when our daily kilocalorie or kilojoule ration drops to 300 kcal or 1260 kJ per day than someone who is skinny!
This may sound like science fiction, but if ever-increasing areas of the globe are no longer capable of producing food, we'll have to start rationing food again as was necessary during the two World Wars.
The World Wars
During World War I and II there were no luxury foods, very little fat, hardly any protein and no sugar, but just staple cereals and basic vegetables on the menu. It's interesting to note that most people did lose weight during this time, the incidence of caries (tooth decay) dropped and those individuals who were not casualties of bombing or other war-related deaths and who did not die of outright starvation or deficiency diseases like pellagra, experienced less degenerative disease than before or after each of these global wars.
So, a greatly reduced energy intake and a relatively monotonous diet may help us to survive as a species, but it won’t be gastronomically exciting - and the slightest imbalance may expose us to starvation and/or deficiency diseases.
Very overweight people will "last longer" than those people who are very thin at the start of a famine. Our genes, which have coped with such periods of feast and famine for millennia, may thus be preparing us to survive the mega-famines that loom in the future.
Many survivors of Word War II prison camps never leave a morsel of food on their plates - even decades after being liberated. The years of deprivation in the prison camp, where their energy intake could never compensate for the strenuous physical work they had to do or the freezing temperatures they were exposed to, probably activated their thrifty genes.
The balanced approach
Dieticians still believe it's essential for overweight people to reduce their overall energy intake, which means eating less food in total. If overweight people are to follow a balanced diet, it means reducing the intake of fat, sugar, alcohol, carbohydrates and proteins - all in an effort to ingest fewer kilocalories or kilojoules in total.
The approach entrenched in the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG), which form the cornerstone of healthy nutrition advice in South Africa, is that everyone should eat a variety of foods as permitted by budgetary constraints. Furthermore, the intake of sugar, fat and salt should be reduced.
Note that these guidelines don't state that any foods should be totally excluded - only that foods that can harm your health haveto be used "sparingly" in the case of sugar (and foods and drinks high in sugar), fats (particularly hard fats like block margarine) and salt (and foods high in salt).
Be active
These guidelines, which were designed specifically for South Africa by experts from all food-, diet- and health-related fields, also contain a non-food/drink guideline that simply states: “Be active”.
It's simple, really: if you don’t use up more energy than you ingest, you'll have a positive energy balance and your body is going to store that energy as fat. So get going and do at least 30 to 45 minutes of physical activity a day if you want to keep overweight and obesity at bay.
Perhaps improving nutrition education and encouraging everyone to be active daily will do more for our figures than the "demonising" of certain foods will ever achieve.
- (Dr Ingrid van Heerden, Health24, February 2014)
(References: (Child K (2013). Just as bad as booze. Nutrition experts declare war on sugar as obesity reaches new widths. The Times, January 13th 2014, page 15; Power M (2013). Chemical threat may make for an unsafe pair of hands. Common antibacterial agents fall foul of US regulators over health concerns. Sunday Times, 19th January 2014, Page 17; Tran M (2013. World is losing the battle against Obesity. Study urges governments to intervene in what is put on the dinner table. Sunday Times, 5th January 2013, Page 19. Originally published in The Guardian, London)
Worldwide, governments and regulatory agencies, public watchdogs and health professionals are scrabbling to find a solution. And, let’s face it, we do need a solution - as soon as possible.
In the meantime, many of the players are looking for a "fat scapegoat". We need something to blame for this epidemic. Lately, sugar and refined carbohydrates have been likened to be "just as bad as booze" or "as dangerous as opioid drugs".
A popular pastime
Humans like the idea of one factor, person or food being responsible for all our ills, which we can then single out as a "scapegoat". Sacrificing one villain as a scapegoat fits in well with our idea that there's an easy and fast fix for something as complex as obesity.
But trying to blame one food, especially sugar, for the world's obesity problem is probably oversimplifying matters. The question we need to ask ourselves is if the instant fix of shunning sugar is actually going to work?
Probably not - simply because there are few other fields more complex than nutrition.
A complex problem
The tendency to gain weight is governed by hundreds of different factors:
- The foods we eat (low-energy vs. obesogenic foods)
- The quantities of the foods we eat
- The combinations of foods we eat
- Our genetic makeup
- How much physical activity we do
- Our emotional makeup
- Hormones in our bodies
- Hormones in our environment (i.e. oestrogen disruptors like triclosan and triclocarban, which are used in popular antiseptics and disinfectants and which enter the water supply where it's transferred into plants and animals, and eventually into our food chain)
- Prior dietary history, going as far back as the womb (undernourished, underweight babies are vulnerable to all the diseases of lifestyle, including obesity)
- Hundreds of as yet unidentified factors, for example virus infections that may trigger obesity
In view of the above, anyone who proposes to solve the problem of obesity by "declaring war on sugar" is probably being highly optimistic.
Thrifty gene alert
The earth’s population has exceeded 7 billion people, and is growing daily. This intense overcrowding, coupled with the effects of global warming, threatens our food supplies. It's quite possible that these factors have triggered an emergency response in our "thrifty genes" to store as much fat as we can for the lean times that lie ahead for our species. Someone who has 200kg of fat tucked into his or her storage depots will last a lot longer when our daily kilocalorie or kilojoule ration drops to 300 kcal or 1260 kJ per day than someone who is skinny!
This may sound like science fiction, but if ever-increasing areas of the globe are no longer capable of producing food, we'll have to start rationing food again as was necessary during the two World Wars.
The World Wars
During World War I and II there were no luxury foods, very little fat, hardly any protein and no sugar, but just staple cereals and basic vegetables on the menu. It's interesting to note that most people did lose weight during this time, the incidence of caries (tooth decay) dropped and those individuals who were not casualties of bombing or other war-related deaths and who did not die of outright starvation or deficiency diseases like pellagra, experienced less degenerative disease than before or after each of these global wars.
So, a greatly reduced energy intake and a relatively monotonous diet may help us to survive as a species, but it won’t be gastronomically exciting - and the slightest imbalance may expose us to starvation and/or deficiency diseases.
Very overweight people will "last longer" than those people who are very thin at the start of a famine. Our genes, which have coped with such periods of feast and famine for millennia, may thus be preparing us to survive the mega-famines that loom in the future.
Many survivors of Word War II prison camps never leave a morsel of food on their plates - even decades after being liberated. The years of deprivation in the prison camp, where their energy intake could never compensate for the strenuous physical work they had to do or the freezing temperatures they were exposed to, probably activated their thrifty genes.
The balanced approach
Dieticians still believe it's essential for overweight people to reduce their overall energy intake, which means eating less food in total. If overweight people are to follow a balanced diet, it means reducing the intake of fat, sugar, alcohol, carbohydrates and proteins - all in an effort to ingest fewer kilocalories or kilojoules in total.
The approach entrenched in the Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG), which form the cornerstone of healthy nutrition advice in South Africa, is that everyone should eat a variety of foods as permitted by budgetary constraints. Furthermore, the intake of sugar, fat and salt should be reduced.
Note that these guidelines don't state that any foods should be totally excluded - only that foods that can harm your health haveto be used "sparingly" in the case of sugar (and foods and drinks high in sugar), fats (particularly hard fats like block margarine) and salt (and foods high in salt).
Be active
These guidelines, which were designed specifically for South Africa by experts from all food-, diet- and health-related fields, also contain a non-food/drink guideline that simply states: “Be active”.
It's simple, really: if you don’t use up more energy than you ingest, you'll have a positive energy balance and your body is going to store that energy as fat. So get going and do at least 30 to 45 minutes of physical activity a day if you want to keep overweight and obesity at bay.
Perhaps improving nutrition education and encouraging everyone to be active daily will do more for our figures than the "demonising" of certain foods will ever achieve.
- (Dr Ingrid van Heerden, Health24, February 2014)
(References: (Child K (2013). Just as bad as booze. Nutrition experts declare war on sugar as obesity reaches new widths. The Times, January 13th 2014, page 15; Power M (2013). Chemical threat may make for an unsafe pair of hands. Common antibacterial agents fall foul of US regulators over health concerns. Sunday Times, 19th January 2014, Page 17; Tran M (2013. World is losing the battle against Obesity. Study urges governments to intervene in what is put on the dinner table. Sunday Times, 5th January 2013, Page 19. Originally published in The Guardian, London)
