Day 253 - 21 May 96 - Page 17


     
     1
     2        The point is that whether or not it is difficult for people
     3        to change their diets, the reality is that the type of food
     4        that you eat, not just your energy intake and energy
     5        expenditure, but the type of food you eat, because of how
     6        well it will fill you up and so on, can and does affect
     7        obesity?
     8        A.  I think the only way in which diet is likely to affect
     9        obesity, and this is something that is beginning to be
    10        recognised, and when I say "recognised", it is becoming a
    11        topic for exploration for research, it is a hypothesis, but
    12        most studies or surveys have shown that people who tend to
    13        be overweight have a slightly higher proportion of fat in
    14        their diets than people who are not overweight.  Likewise,
    15        people who are thin tend to have a higher proportion of
    16        sugar in their diets than people who are overweight.
    17
    18        There is an inverse relationship between sugar and fat.  If
    19        you have a high fat diet, you have a low sugar diet and
    20        fat, one can argue, could induce obesity, not because of
    21        any feeling from other components in the diet, but because
    22        when you consume fat, it is simply deposited and it stays
    23        on deposit until you require it for physical activity.
    24
    25        If physical activity is not forthcoming, the deposit gets
    26        larger from day-to-day.  Fat does not signal to the body
    27        that it is actually consumed whereas carbohydrate does.  So
    28        one could argue that the evidence suggesting that people
    29        who are overweight tend to eat diets with rather more fat
    30        in it, that there would be an association between a high
    31        fat intake and obesity.
    32
    33   Q.   Thank you.  Just one point about what you said earlier:
    34        When you were talking about a high sugar diet, that would
    35        include all types of sugar and not just kind of sugar that
    36        we add?
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Not just free sugar?
    39        A.  Well, yes.  This is a matter I feel strongly about.
    40        Apart from sugar, which is incorporated in foods, and added
    41        to tea and coffee, and put on grapefruit and so on, the
    42        other kind of sugar which is naturally incorporated in the
    43        structure of food which has been labelled "intrinsic"
    44        represents about 6 to 8 per cent of total sugar, and the
    45        moment you start eating a piece of fruit, by definition,
    46        your intrinsic sugar becomes non-milk extrinsic sugar and
    47        the whole thing is a nonsense and the only way to look at
    48        it is to look at total sugars in the diet, not used in
    49        these terms, which is not designed to identify sugars in
    50        relation to health but simply the sources of sugar in one's 
    51        diet.  They have been grossly misused.  I talk about total 
    52        sugar. 
    53
    54   MS. STEEL:  Thank you.  I think I have almost finished.  There
    55        was just one bit I forgot to ask you about yesterday which
    56        was in the "Risk Factors for Stroke" section.  It is on
    57        page 94?
    58        A.  Which one?
    59
    60   Q.   It is "The Nutritional Aspects of Cardio-Vascular Disease"?

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