February 14, 2023 – It's not necessarily the quantity of sugar you eat that may harm your heart, however the sort of sugar you eat that may result in heart disease, a latest study suggests.
Eating foods high in “free sugar” significantly increases the danger of heart disease and stroke, in response to researchers on the University of Oxford within the UK. They found that the more free sugar someone consumes, the greater the danger.
Free sugars include all sugars added to a food by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, in addition to sugars that occur naturally in honey, syrups and unsweetened fruit juice. Free sugars don’t include sugars that occur naturally in whole fruits or vegetables.
“Our research shows how important it is to consider the type and source of sugar consumed when assessing the links between sugar and cardiovascular health,” said Rebecca Kelly, a researcher at Oxford Population Health, in a opinion“Replacing free sugars with non-free sugars, such as those found naturally in fruits and vegetables, combined with higher fiber intake may help protect against cardiovascular disease.”
The study was published today within the journal BMC Medicine. Researchers checked out data from 110,497 people within the UK to find out how weight-reduction plan affected the danger of heart disease and stroke over a 9-year period. The people within the study were between 37 and 73 years old.
The highest risk of heart disease was in individuals who consumed about 95 grams of free sugar per day, or 18% of their each day calories, said researcher Cody Watling, a doctoral student on the University of Oxford NBC News. (For context: US guidelines recommend that lower than 10% of calories per day come from added sugar.)
As a secondary consequence, the authors said their study confirmed previous research that found the more fiber someone consumed, the lower their risk of heart disease. Fiber is present in fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
The researchers explained that their study did not discover the most important sources of free sugars within the human weight-reduction plan.