Too much sugar raises diabetes risk in Latino kids
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Overweight Latino children who eat lots of sugar and drink sugary drinks may show signs of poor beta cell function, which is associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, according to the results of a new study.
“The take-home message is something we know already—eating a lot of sugar is not good for you,” said Dr. Michael I. Goran, of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Prevention Research.
“If left untreated, overweight and poor diet among these children could have disastrous consequences for minority health and the health-care costs for future generations,” Goran added in a university statement.
Overweight individuals are known to have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and research shows that Latino children in the United States are more often overweight than are non-Latino white children. Even among overweight children, however, Latinos have been shown to have a higher risk for diabetes than their white peers. They are also more likely to be resistant to insulin, regardless of their weight status, according to previous research.
Investigators have previously reported that sugar consumption may be an important factor associated with diabetes risk and the action of insulin in the body, but most of those studies were conducted in white adults.
To determine if this is also true for Latino children, Goran and his colleagues studied 63 overweight children, ages 9 to 13 years, enrolled in the ongoing Study of Latinos at Risk Diabetes Project. They examined the children’s eating habits by analyzing their self-reported three-day dietary records, analyzed the children’s body composition, and tested their blood insulin levels before and after the children were given glucose.
All of the children had a family history of diabetes, meaning the condition was diagnosed in at least one parent, sibling or grandparent, but none of the children had been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
Overall, the children’s sugar consumption was the only dietary component associated with insulin dynamics, the researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Sugary foods and drinks accounted for more than 40 percent of the total carbohydrates consumed by these children, the report indicates, and almost half of their sugar consumption was in the form of sugary drinks. On average, children drank 2.5 daily servings of drinks with added sugar.
This high sugar intake was associated with lower beta cell function—a measure of the pancreas’ ability to produce insulin—and a lower acute insulin response—how much insulin beta cells produce in response to glucose, study findings indicate, and this association remained true regardless of the children’s sex, age and body composition, the researchers note.
These findings suggest that “high sugar levels may contribute to deterioration in beta cell function,” Goran told Reuters Health.
“These results emphasize the need for early nutritional interventions to reduce daily sugar intake in overweight Latino children and potentially reduce their risk for type 2 diabetes,” Goran and his co-authors conclude.
Parents can help reduce their child’s sugar intake and teens can cut down on their own sugar consumption by adding water to their fruit juices, replacing sodas with water, switching to high fiber cereals and breads, and eating more fruits and vegetables instead of sweets, Goran said.
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2005.
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