Man Eats Sugar-Laden Diet for 60 Days and Gets Shocking Diagnosis
Lisa Egan
Ready Nutrition
By now, most of us realize that sugar is not a health food and is meant to be consumed in moderation.
It’s been linked with poor dental health, obesity, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes, cell aging, heart disease, and cancer.
What is less commonly publicized is the link between sugar consumption and liver health.
For years, fat was the subject of a dietary witch-hunt. It was implicated in obesity, type II diabetes, and a myriad of other health problems. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me chronicled the 30-day McDonald’s-only diet of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. During that month, Spurlock consumed 90 meals from the fast-food chain. He gained 24 pounds, his cholesterol level shot up to 230, and fat accumulated in his liver. Those results led many to believe that dietary fat was the culprit, despite the fact that Spurlock consumed over 30 pounds of sugar in that month.
In 2009, filmmaker Tom Naughton released a documentary titled Fat Head, in which he chronicled his own 30-day McDonald’s-based diet. Naughton restricted his calories to 2,000 per day and limited his carbohydrate consumption to around 100 grams per day. He didn’t limit his fat intake, though – he consumed around 100 grams per day, with about 50 coming from saturated fat. Naughton lost 12 pounds and saw improvements in other health markers during his experiment.
The low-fat craze was based on flawed studies, political bias, and clever marketing by the food industry. It led to the mass availability and widespread promotion of low-fat “foods” like cookies, crackers, cheese, candy, and ice cream. You name it, and Big Food found a way to make it low-fat.
Not only did the low-fat craze fail to improve the health of those who fell for it, it also led to a dangerous increase in dietary carbohydrate consumption – mostly in the form of added sugars. That’s because when fat is removed from a food, something has to be added to make it more palatable. Usually, that thing is sugar.
A new documentary that is scheduled for release in 2015 focuses on the impact dietary sugar can have on health. The movie, aptly titled That Sugar Film, outlines filmmaker Damon Gameau’s 60-day experiment with a high-sugar diet.
Gameau did not binge on candy, sodas, or other sugary treats. He consumed low-fat foods that are commonly believed to be “healthful.”
He explained his food choices to Yahoo:
“I had no soft drink, chocolate, ice cream, or confectionery. All the sugars that I was eating were found in perceived healthy foods, so low-fat yogurts, and muesli bars, and cereals, and fruit juices, sports drinks … these kind of things that often parents would give their kids thinking they’re doing the right thing.”
Gameau increased his intake of sugar to 40 teaspoons per day, just slightly more than the average daily consumption of a typical teenager. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the average American consumes 20 teaspoons of sugar daily. The AHA’s daily recommendations for sugar consumption are 6 teaspoons for women and 9 teaspoons for men.
Within three weeks, the previously healthy Gameau noticed his mental and physical health declining:
During the filming, Gameau found the sugary diet affected his physical and mental health, and doctors called his mental functioning “unstable.” He also added nearly four inches of visceral fat around his waist, even though he said the diet left him feeling hungry, no matter how much he ate.
He also received a troubling diagnosis: his doctor told him he was beginning to develop fatty liver disease.
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the accumulation of abnormal amounts of fat within the liver. It is closely linked to the obesity crisis, is a strong risk factor for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and in severe cases it can lead to liver failure.
Fatty liver disease rarely causes symptoms until the liver disease is far advanced. At most, there is enlargement of the liver which may cause mild discomfort in the right upper abdomen.
Other possible symptoms include fatigue, weakness, weight loss, loss of appetite, nausea, abdominal pain, spider-like blood vessels, yellowing of the skin and eyes (jaundice), itching, fluid build up and swelling of the legs (edema) and abdomen (ascites), and mental confusion.
The possible complications are serious and include liver failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, and liver cancer.
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