Can A Sweet Tooth Hurt Your Heart?

The sugar story just got a little more serious. Most of us know that sugar in the diet can lead to dental caries (particularly if the sugary food is sticky) and if the calories from sugar are in excess of our body's needs, it can lead to extra body fat stores. No surprise there.

Then some research uncovered that liquid calories don't seem to register in our stomach like food calories do-they don't fill up and satisfy our hunger as well as solid food calories. Some of you might have figured this out already based on your own experiences.

I've seen various and sundry research over the last few years suggesting that sweetened drinks may be linked to a higher risk of:

• Weight gain
• Metabolic syndrome
• Type 2 diabetes

This is a scary thought considering soft drink sales have been soaring in the United States and worldwide.

Today, the American Heart Association released Dietary Sugars Intake and Cardiovascular Health: A Scientific Statement due to heightened concerns about the adverse effects of "excessive consumption of sugars." Notice the word, "excessive?" That's the part that gets us into trouble. It isn't so much that we have some sugar... it's that we have too much sugar. The daily intake of added sugars for Americans was around 22 teaspoons between 2001 and 2004, according to the American Heart Association. Back in college I remember doing a presentation demonstrating that one 12-ounce soda had the equivalent of 9 teaspoons of sugar in it. That was before Big Gulps and supersized sodas.

Even though the American Heart Association Statement takes issue with the amount of added sugars in the American diet, it can't help but point a big finger toward soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages because these are the main source of added sugars in Americans' diets.

Regular consumption of sugar sweetened beverages was associated with a higher risk of coronary artery disease in women even after the researchers accounted for other unhealthful lifestyle or dietary factors, according to results from the Nurses' Health Study, which followed over 88,000 women for 24 years.

Trading in your regular sodas for non-calorie liquids is a great place to start and one of those drinks might even be a diet soda - artificially sweetened beverages, at least in Nurses' Health Study, were not associated with coronary heart disease. (Not that I recommend drinking large amounts of diet soda.)

The bottom line to the American Heart Association statement is that they recommend we reduce our intake of added sugars. They go on to explain that a prudent upper limit of intake for most American women is no more than 100 calories per day and no more than 150 calories per day from added sugars for most American men. I don't know about you but I opt to spend those added sugar calories on a few bites of chocolate or a scoop of light ice cream instead of sweet drinks.

[Circulation 2009; August 24]

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Taste Test Tuesday: Weight Watchers Giant Mint Fudge Ice Cream Sundae Cone

These are one of the better low fat ice cream treats in the frozen dessert aisle for sure. The chocolate cone is definitely unique and so is the mint ice cream that fills it. But Weight Watchers had me with the "2 Points Per Cone" written on the box. Each cone is very tasty and satisfying with one serving being a perfectly sized portion.

The low fat mint ice cream is made with milk fat and nonfat milk, sugar, polydextrose, maltodextrin, cellulose gel, and a few other ingredients, while the chocolate cone is made with mostly bleached white flour, sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, natural and artificial flavors, oat fiber, and canola oil. This tells us that 4 grams of fiber per cone is coming from a couple different directions and that sugar is the second or third ingredient for the ice cream and the cone. A quick glance at the grams of sugar per cone plus a bit of math and now 43% of the calories for this yummy dessert comes from sugar. Here are the rest of the nutritional numbers.

Each cone contains:

140 calories
3 g protein
27 g carbohydrate
15 g sugar
4 g fat
1 g saturated fat (0 g trans)
Less than 5 mg cholesterol
4 g fiber
70 mg sodium

I would buy these again, perhaps occasionally, because they are enjoyable to eat and one serving doesn't get me too far up in calories. Although the % of calories from sugar is a bit higher than I would like, the grams of fiber is surprisingly high as well.

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Taste Test Tuesday: Kellogg's Fiber Plus Antioxidants Bars

Chocolate Chip Chewy Bars

There's a new granola-type bar on the supermarket shelf! And this one gives you 35% of your daily fiber (or so the package says). It looks like a candy bar, it almost tastes like a candy bar... is it a candy bar with fiber?

Well, let's look at the first 5 ingredients:

• Chicory root fiber
• Rolled oats
• Crisp rice cereal (rice flour, sugar, malt extract, etc..)
• Sugar
• Semi sweet chocolate drops

While the first few ingredients are more like a cereal, the last two are more like a candy bar. Put it all together and you've got a chewy bar with 23% calories from sugar and 30% calories from fat. Each 120-calorie bar also contributes 9 grams of fiber, 10% Daily Value for calcium, 20% Daily Value for vitamin E and zinc.

Here's the nutritional information per bar:

120 calories
4 g fat
2 g saturated fat
0 g trans
55 mg sodium
26 g carbohydrate
7 g sugars
2 g protein
9 g fiber

If you are looking for a chew cereal-based bar that is really high in fiber but also high in flavor and you don't mind that it has around 20% calories from sugar and only 2 grams of protein...this is a snack bar for you!

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Best to Worst Easter Basket Treats

Pick your Easter basket poison. Are you partial to the marshmallow or peanut butter eggs or the milk chocolate bunnies...or, are you a Peeps person? What's the best way to approach your Easter basket, knowing you're going to indulge to some extent?

Of all the Easter basket options, these are the best to worst Easter treats. Where does the regular hard-boiled egg fit in to this table? With 70 calories, no sugar and 4.5 grams of fat, you'll find it somewhere between the Sugar-Free Peeps and the Elmer's Toasted Marshmallow Egg.

Easter Treat	Calories	Sugar (g)	Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)
Bubble King Bubble Gum Eggs	15	4	0	0
Peeps Sugar-Free Marshmallow Chicks, 3 chicks (28 g) NOTE: each serving contains 23 g sugar alcohol	60	0	0	0
Hard boiled Egg (Silver lining-6 g quality protein and all sorts of vitamins and minerals)	70	0	4.5	1.5
Elmer's Toasted Marshmallow Egg (21 g)	80	14	2.5	1.5
Sugar Free Russell Stover Jelly Beans (40 g) 35 pieces NOTE: each serving contains 30 g sugar alcohol	110	0	0	0
Starburst Sour Jelly Beans, 1/4 cup	160	30	0	0
Peeps, 5 chicks (42 g)	140	34	0	0
Cadbury Crème Egg (34 g) (Silver lining-4% Daily Value calcium)	150	22	5	3
Almond Joy Egg, (31 g) (Silver lining-1 gram of fiber)	140	14	8	6
Peanut M&M's Bunny Mix 1/4 cup (Silver lining-1 gram fiber and a small serving of peanuts)	220	29	6	5
Whoppers Robin Eggs (40 g) 8 pieces	180	29	6	5
Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bunnies (34 g) (Silver lining-1 g fiber, 8% Daily Value Calcium)	170	19	10	6
Nestle Crunch Nest Eggs (37 g) 5 pieces (Silver lining-4% Daily Value for Calcium)	180	20	9	6
Hershey's milk chocolate Eggs (40 g) 7 pieces (Silver lining-1 g fiber, 8% Daily Value Calcium)	200	22	12	7
Dove Dark Chocolate Eggs, 6 foil Wrapped eggs (43 g) (Silver lining-3 grams fiber)	220	20	14	8
Cadbury Mini Crème Egg (36 g)(Silver lining-4% Daily Value calcium)	170	23	6	4
Dove Truffle Egg (25.5 g)	150	13	10	7
Hershey's King Size Marshmallow Egg (67 g) (Silver lining-4% Daily Value vitamin A and Calcium)	260	38	8	4.5
Reese's Peanut Butter Egg (34 g) (Silver lining-1 gram fiber)	180	15	11	3.5
Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs, little Foil wrapped ones, 5 pieces (38 g) (Silver lining-1 gram fiber)	190	18	12	6
Hershey's Bliss Milk Chocolate Eggs 5 pieces (39 g) (Silver lining-1 gram fiber, 6% Daily value for calcium)	200	20	13	8
Dove Solid Milk Chocolate Egg—6 oz, 1/3 egg (56.5 g)	307	31	19	10.5
1/2 bunny (2.25 oz) (Silver lining-1.5 grams fiber)	345	36	21	12
Reese's Reester Bunny—5 oz 1/2 bunny (2.5 oz) (Silver lining-2 grams fiber)	340	38	20	9

The bottom line to enjoying Easter candy is moderation. Keep certain Easter candy principles in mind before proceeding with your Easter basket massacre:

Never eat the whole chocolate Easter bunny in one sitting; the nutritional totals are likely to shock you. The entire 6- ounce Dove bunny or egg, for example, totals 920 calories, 56 grams of fat, 32 grams saturated fat, and 92 grams of sugar. You can break off the piece you want and keep the rest in there for when the next chocolate bunny craving hits.

A mini candy option doesn't mean its "mini" in calories, fat or sugar. The little foil-wrapped Reese's Peanut Butter eggs have more sugar, fat and saturated fat in a 5-piece serving than the traditional (34 gram) peanut butter egg.

Keep your eye on the portion size! You would be surprised what is considered a serving on some of the Easter candy labels. So check this out and know what you are really getting into in terms of calories, fat and sugar. If the label tells you that a serving is 1/4 of the 5-ounce bunny and it already has a fairly shocking amount of fat grams per serving...it's probably best not to enjoy more than 1/4 of the bunny!

It's better to eat jelly beans than to drink soda! Our bodies appear to be more likely to compensate naturally for the calories in a handful of jelly beans compared to the same calories in a sweetened drink. A Purdue University study found that significant weight gain might occur when carbohydrates are consumed as liquids rather than as solid food because the participants didn't decrease their intake to compensate for the added soda calories but were able to for the additional jellybean calories.

Sources:
NCA National Confectioners Association
International Journal of Obesity. June 2000, Vol. 24, Number 6, pages 794-800 "Liquid versus solid carbohydrate: effects on food intake and body weight" DiMeglio DP et al.

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Why Kids Like Sweets

Why do kids of all cultures love sweet-tasting foods compared to adults? Here's a hint...it has to do with growing like a weed. New research from the University of Washington and the Monell Chemical Senses Center indicates that this preference for sweets is based in human biology and is related to the high growth rate in children.

This does actually make sense because when growth is rapid, the body's calorie demands do similarly increase and the programmed preference for sweet foods will point kids in the direction of high calorie foods.

The researchers looked at sweet preference and biological measures of growth and physical maturation in 143 children between the ages of 11 and 15. The findings, reported in the journal Physiology & Behavior, suggest that keen preference for sweet foods is related to their high growth rate and that as children's growth slows and eventually stops, their preference for sweets likewise declines.

At least we know part of the reason why children seem to gravitate toward sweets...now how do we explain why many grown ups still have their sweet tooth?

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Pepsi and Mountain Dew "Throwback"

High fructose corn syrup is out and natural sugar is IN?

Well, not exactly. The natural sugar switcheroo is only for 8 weeks and it's in a special "throwback" version of the sodas. The limited edition sodas feature a retro look in their packaging and are sweetened with natural sugar (not high fructose corn syrup), just as they were back in the '60s and '70s. I was actually around in those two decades but can't really recall what either tasted like.

Most likely they will still taste darn sweet since their calories per can aren't going to change. Both Throwback sodas will be available nationwide beginning April 20 in 20-oz single-serve bottles and 12-pack cans.

I asked the company if they would consider permanently offering the Throwback sodas (say if millions of anti-high-fructose-corn-syrup soda drinkers made a run on this product) and they replied "there are no current plans to offer them beyond mid-June."


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Vitamin Water on the Hot Seat

Glaceau's Vitamin Water (now owned by Coca-Cola) was on the list of beverage "sugar shockers" in a recent article I wrote for WebMD. I was just looking at potential products for the mere shock value over the amount of sugar a serving contains. I wasn't looking for which products had confusing and perhaps erroneous health claims on their packaging. But CSPI was...

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, just served notice to Coca-Cola of a class action lawsuit filed over what CSPI says are deceptive and unsubstantiated claims on its VitaminWater line of beverages. CSPI is strongly suggesting that this VitaminWater is really:

Vitamins + water + sugar + hype…equals soda minus the bubbles.

Instead of promoting health, CSPI nutritionists believe this line of product with 33 grams of sugar in each bottle (and in spite of the health buzz words used on their labels like "defense," "rescue," "energy," and "endurance,") is actually doing more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

"While it is true that vitamins do play various roles in the human body, the statements on VitaminWater labels go far beyond even the loose, so-called "structure/function claims" allowed by the Food and Drug Administration and cross the line into outright fraud," notes CSPI in their press release.

Stay tuned on this one folks! They could both be in for a wild litigation ride. In the meantime, my advice is to get your nutrients (or vitamins) from whole foods as much as possible and to drink water or green tea without added sweetener (or vitamins).

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