Sweetening up your diet can help in battle of the bulge

SIMPLY sweetening up a diet can help people lose more weight, an Irish study shows.

The study examined low-sugar diets and compared the amount of weight lost with that resulting from diets which included twice the amount of sugar.

It found higher weight loss was achieved on the diet containing the higher sugar content.

The study, carried out at Trinity College Dublin, concluded that moderate levels of sugar should be encouraged in a weight-reducing diet.

The authors also said more emphasis needed to be placed on educating people on how they can achieve a low-fat diet.

One of the authors, Mary Moloney, also a senior lecturer in dietetics at Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, said obesity was mainly caused by too much fat and too little exercise. “Our study clearly shows that including a certain amount of sugar in the diet can result in a decrease in the intake of fat,” she said.

There is already some evidence to show that reducing sugar in the diet may also cause fat levels to rise.

Another study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, found that simply replacing fat with carbohydrate (starch or sugar) resulted in some weight loss that was subsequently maintained in obese and overweight people.

Studies have also shown that sugar, along with all carbohydrates, plays an important role in appetite control which helps prevent overeating.

Ms Moloney said that including sugar in a weight-reducing diet did not compromise vitamin and mineral intake.

Clinical nutritionist Dr Mary McCreery said there was no need to eliminate sugar from any type of diet.

Dr McCreery pointed out even diabetics were allowed to include sugar in their diets as long as it was part of a regular meal.

“Regular meals with moderate amounts of food, combined with exercise are the key to controlling your weight,” she said.

Dr McCreery said the Irish diet contained too much fat and too little carbohydrate. “Simply correcting this imbalance could help prevent obesity,” she said.

Obesity levels in Ireland are rising by 1% every year.

Obesity has also risen in tandem with a rise in the level of fat in the diet at a time when the level of carbohydrate has fallen dramatically.

Fat may promote obesity simply because it is so rich in calories. A thin sliver of butter contains 50 calories, compared to only 16 in a spoonful of sugar.