Sweet talking people into cutting back on sugar

That was the warning today from university diabetes experts who are researching new ways to help people understand the need to cut back to avoid obesity and disease.

Dr Claire Marriott, Senior Lecturer in the university’s College of Life, Health and Physical Sciences, said the sugary drinks tax could help but warned: “It is very limited if we don’t help people to actually understand why they shouldn’t be eating too much sugar.

“Although by no means solely responsible, sugary drinks have been identified as being a major contributing factor to the obesity epidemic.

“The effectiveness of a sugary drinks tax in other countries has been researched; while some studies suggest it has helped reduce overall weight, more recent data suggests sales (in Mexico) may not have been affected after all. It is worth noting though that with such high numbers of people being overweight, if it helps just a small per cent this is still very positive.

Dr Claire Marriott

“But we consume sugar from a lot of different sources and a tax will only work to help people if they don’t replace that sugar with something else. Understanding the impact of sugar on weight-loss, metabolism and mood is key and that is what we need to focus on next.”

Dr Marriott is leading the new research with Professor Adrian Bone, Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Dr Wendy Macfarlane.

In collaboration with the Hastings branch of StreetGames, a national sports charity, the university has begun discussing health messages with young volunteers. The university’s Diabetes Research Group in Hastings has hosted a public health course to develop a tool which could be used by volunteers to discuss health messages with their peers.

Dr Claire Marriott, said: “We are now collecting real-time blood glucose profiles from healthy volunteers in order to better understand glucose metabolism in response to different food types in different individuals. This project is also trialling different mobile applications as recording methods in order to optimise planning for a larger trial.”

She said reducing the consumption of sugar in the diet, in particular in young people, was essential in the fight against the growing trend of early-onset type 2 diabetes: “While the benefits of healthy eating are undisputed there is a challenge in educating and motivating individuals to change.”