Cookies, snacks, industrial juices, packaged bread but also ready-made dishes such as soups or already seasoned pastas, all these foods hide a pitfall called added sugars. And the more foods rich in added sugar are consumed, the higher the risk of developing abdominal fat over the years. This is what emerges from a recent research published a few days ago in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology by a team from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (Yi SY et al, Eur J Prev Cardiol, 2020).
The researchers relied on a study, called CARDIA, currently still ongoing in the United States to assess the health conditions of all participants. The study has been following more than 3,000 healthy people since 1985 who were between 18 and 30 years old at the time of the start of the study. During the years of observation, in particular, dietary habits were monitored with attention to the amount of sugary drinks, industrial juices and foods that had added sugar. The CARDIA study had detected, after 20 years, thanks to a CT scan, the presence of body fat in the participants. The researchers of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, the authors of the article we are analyzing, were able to base themselves on the data provided by the CT scan to evaluate whether there was a link between increased body fat and the intake of foods rich in sugars. Well, what has emerged is that those who ate more sugar-rich foods developed, in the long run, a greater amount of fat around the heart, around the waistline and around the internal organs. This type of fat is very dangerous as it releases substances into the body that can represent a health risk, increasing the probability of developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
This is why it is important to prefer drinks, such as water or unsweetened herbal teas, and healthier foods, taking care to read the label of all the foods that we are buying. Attention should be paid to writing such as syrups, glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose.
