Calories and vitamins

Eating a diet rich in added sugars is not harmful, as it has no effect on the quality of the diet.

Eating a diet rich in added sugars is no more harmful, as added sugars have little or no substantive effect on the quality of the diet, says a new study conducted by the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy (CFNP) at Virginia Tech.

Published in this month's issue of the Journal of Nutrition, the study refutes previous analyses done by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM) which stated that the consumption of added sugars "displaces" essential vitamins and minerals in the diet.

"Since the dietary guidelines are relying heavily on what we believe to be a flawed interpretation of the data by the IOM, our study is a very important analysis for the nutrition community as a whole, and particularly for nutrition policy," Maureen Storey, director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy and co-author of the study, said.

In the CFNP study researchers used the same data as used by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III) and used multiple regression to divide the total energy into energy from added sugars and energy from other sources. This approach produced very different results than IOM's original analysis.

She also added that the re-analysis of the data reveals that the more calories (energy) people consume, the more likely they are to get the essential vitamins and minerals they need.

"That means it is even more important to increase physical activity so that those calories are burned off to prevent weight gain," she said.