Stupid Study of the Month Promotes Making Brown Sugar Part of Your Diabetes Treatment Plan

I wish the food scientists at my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts, would stop taking food industry money to come up with news stories that promote their sponsor's products in ways that lead to more amputation, kidney failure, blindness and cardiac death. But they have done it again.

This week's horror study is the one that hit the news wires claiming that brown sugar, date sugar and corn syrup provide important health benefits for people with Type 2 diabetes. The story showed up in my local newspaper a few days ago, and I almost blogged about it then, but I had hoped that it appeared because the researcher was local and did not want to give it any more attention than it had already got.

But sadly, today's issue of Diabetes in Control picked up on the story and then it appeared in Medical News Today so it's clear that the sugar industry PR machine has been hard at work spreading the message that you should add more sugar to your diabetes health regimen. So let's look at what they found and why their conclusions are so flawed.

Here's the gist of the press release the sugar industry PR machine has gotten picked up in my newspaper and the internet health press: This version is from Medical News Today:

"Some sweeteners, including date sugar and less refined, dark brown sugars, showed potential for managing Type 2 diabetes and related complications information that could help Type 2 diabetics make better dietary choices."

The press release then describes the UMASS study headed by Kalidas Shetty writing, "Many sweeteners contained significant amounts of antioxidants, which have the potential to control diabetes-linked high blood pressure and heart disease,' says Shetty, who adds that these were in vitro laboratory studies performed outside of living organisms. 'Several types of sweeteners also showed an interesting potential to inhibit the action of a key enzyme related to Type 2 diabetes, which is also the target of drugs used to treat this condition.'"

In short, this study suggests it's time for us folks with diabetes to start treating our disease with sugar!

But what did these researchers really find? They found minute amounts of antioxidants in brown sugar and date sugar. From this they drew the astonishing conclusion that since high blood sugars cause oxidation, people with diabetes would benefit from eating sugars that contain tiny amounts of antioxidants.

It gets worse. The next thing they did was discover that all sugars contain a small amount of a naturally occurring substance that inhibits the enzyme alpha glucosidase which is what digests complex sugars into glucose.

They then went on to discover that corn syrup has about three times as much of this alpha glucosidase inhibiting substance as do regular sugars. Which must be why when we eat corn syrup we see no blood sugar rise at all. Oh? We do see a rise? A big one. You're kidding! Wow! Someone needs to alert the UMASS scientists to this fact at once.

Because that's the huge flaw here. Before suggesting that their sugars could "manage Type 2 diabetes" (their wording) they should have fed some of these sugars to people with diabetes and seen what happened to their blood sugars when they ate them, which is that they rose higher than they would with any other food you could possibly feed them except pure glucose.

But what about the supposed health benefit of those antioxidants in the brown sugar? Well, if the only damage high blood sugar did to our bodies was to cause oxidation, perhaps a sugar with added antioxidants would be marginally helpful to people with diabetes.

But it isn't oxidation that causes neuropathy. It is glycation-- the bonding of glucose to other proteins, like, say the ones in your capillaries and nerves. Ditto with your eyes and kidneys. It isn't oxidation that makes you go blind or puts you on dialysis. It is a whole complex series of things that happen when your tiny capillaries get plugged up with glucose molecules. And when you eat any pure sugar be it date sugar or brown sugar it turns into glucose within minutes. Lots of it. And it damages your organs. And the part that doesn't turn into glucose, well folks it turns into fructose which goes directly to your liver where it turns into body fat.

Suggesting people with diabetes eat some particular sugar for its health benefits is like suggesting that people smoke cigarettes with carotene soaked cigarette papers. And just as ethical.

Shame on these UMASS researchers. A year ago they were promoting sugar filled blueberry soy yogurt as health food since it contained some minute amount of some substance similar to that found in blood pressure pills--without ever measuring its impact on the actual blood pressure of people who ate it. Now they are telling us to medicate ourself with brown sugar and corn syrup.

And sadly because of the venal promotion of this finding, people are going to eat more brown sugar and get more complications. There are real consequences to pursuing profit at the expense of other people's health. I don't know how the people who put out this kind of misinformation live with themselves. But they do. It is amazing what people will do to earn a buck.

NOTE: I have heard from Dr. Kalindas and he assures me that he does not take food industry funding. He also was not happy about the way his research was described in the press release that was reported in so many newspapers. I appreciated his response and his desire to be helpful to people with diabetes. I also get the impression he may not realize how much corporate money has gone into promoting the idea of "healthy whole grains" as an alternative to low carb diets, and how much of that money comes from the big grain companies. It is probably due to the amount of promotion that the grain interests have done to sell the idea of the Glycemic Index that caused the story to get so much press exposure.

It is interesting that the journal article published in the prestigious journal D. Res. Clin. Prac.--the study that tested the blood sugar of people with diabetes who ate whole grain bread and found that it raised blood sugar exactly as much as white bread did--did NOT get any press exposure. To my mind that was probably the single most practical piece of diabetes research published this year.

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