Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

Anti-sugar/fructose researcher and diet book author Robert Lustig has a new trial published in Obesity claiming to have reduced fructose in the diet of kids, and isocalorically replaced it with starch, leading to improvements in metabolic health. This would be a big deal if conducted really well, since fructose has some unique properties to its metabolism relative to just boring old glucose. As of now, it appears that fructose's detrimental effects are due to overconsumption of calories (1). There is, however, a theoretical concern that insulin sensitive vs insulin resistant individuals (2) respond to fructose differently, as fructose, according to rodent studies (3), appears a particularly good substrate for de novo lipogenesis and contributes to excess liver fat. Sugar is postulated to be terrible for all sorts of people, but as I understand, it's been theorized that high fructose consumption, even under eucaloric conditions, can increasee hepatic liver fat in individuals w...

 The BMJ really seems to like its investigative reporting, but the quality of this reporting, as of late, leaves me uneasy; it frequently touches on popular concerns regarding industry's role in the scientific process, and their undoubted desire to support research that will shine well on their products. They had their sugar piece that attempted to paint actually legit researchers like Susan Jebb in a bad light. They gave voice to Nina Teicholz's perspective on th e dietary guidelines   - Ms Teicholz paints herself as someone who is concerned about the quality of evidence and bias that goes into the Dietary Guidelines, but from reading her work, she doesn't seem to have a universally applied ruler with which she measures the quality of research (#IIFYB). She attempts to sell to us that recommendations to replace saturated fats with PUFAs have been bought by the vegetable oil industry. Despite what I find to be weak arguments, she has the amazing ability to distract peopl...