You Are The Long-Term Test (Part 6): "Scientists Say Sugar At Levels Considered Safe Is Harmful"

No kidding:

"When mice were fed a diet that was 25% added sugars – an amount consumed by many humans – the females died at twice the normal rate and the males were less likely to reproduce and hold territory, scientists said in a study published Tuesday.

The study shows "that added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic impacts on mammalian health," the researchers said in the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. "Many researchers have already made calls for reevaluation of these safe levels of consumption."...

I've been avoiding sugar for decades. Anything that makes body parts rot away (teeth) can't be good for you. That should go under "Duh". For comic relief, we have the The Corn Refiners Assn., which:

"...questioned the use of mice in the study, saying in a statement that the only way to know the effect in people would be to test people. "Mice do not eat sugar as a part of their normal diet, so the authors are measuring a contrived overload effect that might not be present had the rodents adapted to sugar intake over time," the group said.

People don't eat sugar as part of their normal diet, either. And peoples' teeth don't rot out on their normal diet. But I imagine that the members of the Corn Refiners Assn. will volunteer for a follow-up test. We'll put 50% on the paleo diet, and 50% can eat the high-sugar diet. For a couple of generations. I know where my money is.

"The diet did not affect weight."

At least there's that... Unfortunately, there's also this:

“The mice tell us the level of health degradation is almost identical” from added-sugar and from cousin-level inbreeding.

"The study says the need for a sensitive toxicity test exists not only for components of our diet, but “is particularly strong for both pharmaceutical science, where 73 percent of drugs that pass preclinical trials fail due to safety concerns, and for toxicology, where shockingly few compounds receive critical or long-term toxicity testing.”...

From the press release announcing the study. Terrific.

“You have to ask why we didn’t discover them 20 years ago,” he adds. “The answer is that until now, we haven’t had a functional, broad and sensitive test to screen the potential toxic substances that are being released into the environment or in our drugs or our food supply.”

From Bill Lagakos on Twitter:

Sugar at levels once considered safe is harmful http://t.co/GzWIkZmf95 Science --> http://t.co/8oaLILJy9K Human equivalent: 3 sodas/d

— Bill Lagakos (@CaloriesProper) August 14, 2013