Diet sodas linked to stroke and Alzheimer’s? The popular press is having a field day with an article that appeared in the journal, Stroke, two weeks ago that claimed to show that folks who drank artificially sweetened (diet) soda had more strokes than those who drank sugar-sweetened soda. Their chance of developing Alzheimer’s also appeared slightly higher. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the researchers actually conducted a study where they randomly divided people into 2 groups and force-fed half the group diet soda and the other half regular soda for 20 years. No, as is too often the case with such research, the researchers asked people how often they tended to consume certain foods and then followed up with them for some period of time to see what cropped up. In this case, the folks they followed happened to be the descendants of the folks whose health data formed the basis of one of the longest running, most frequently cited health studies in history, the Framingham Heart Study. But even though the researchers took possible contributing factors like family history of the diseases, overweight, and other health conditions into account, this study does not even come close to proving that diet soda causes stroke or dementia. So should you give up drinking diet soda anyway? If diet soda is helping you fulfill your daily water needs and especially if you believe it’s helping control your weight by allowing you to pass up calorie-laden alternatives, then drink up, but as always, moderation is the key to everything.

Is it ok to eat fruit? Really?!? That folks are asking this question after the thousands of years we’ve been consuming fruit is Exhibit A in the closet full of confusion scientists sow in consumers’ minds when they spew ill-considered sound bites. The sweetness of fruit and honey is the result of a combination of sugars, including fructose, glucose, and sucrose (the same as the sugar in your sugar bowl and made up of equal parts fructose and glucose). High fructose corn syrup, the sweetener that some self-appointed nutrition experts are blaming for the explosion of obesity and diabetes, is basically sucrose extracted from corn by a process that results in a slightly higher proportion of fructose. As this Consumer Reports article concisely explains, while, yes, fruit does contain sugar, it is also packed with vitamins, minerals, water, and fiber, all nutrients that we need, and the fiber helps slow the digestion of the sugar, a health plus. The sugar in candy bars, cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream, and the like are accompanied by little more than fat and other heavily processed, nutrition-poor ingredients. If you’re wondering which foods contribute more to our weight problems, answer me this question: when’s the last time you binge-ate a bag of apples or a bunch of bananas? I rest my case.

So sugar consumption causes obesity, right? So far, it’s too early to assess the health effects of the taxes some municipalities and countries have levied on sugar-sweetened beverages in an effort to curb obesity. But a study published in this month’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that the obesity rate in Australia has continued to climb over the past 30 years, in spite of a decrease in per capita consumption of sugar and sugar-containing foods during that time period! Message: the obesity and health crisis has no simple solutions!
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/105/4/854.abstract