Read time: 4 minute read

Fat or sugar, which is worse?

in 2014-15, statistics showed that 63.4% of Australians were overweight or obese, so is it sugar or fat that is causing it? Both have been demonised in the past, but this is an interesting experiment!

Two men, identical twins, went on opposite diets for one month. One had access to endless amounts of sugar, and one to endless amounts of fat. The aim was to find out whether it was fat or sugar that was contributing to obesity.

End of month results were as follows! The high-sugar twin lost 1kg, 500gms of fat and 500gms of muscle, and his insulin response to carbohydrates strangely improved. The high-fat twin lost 3.5kg, but it was 1.5kg body fat and 2kg of muscle. His insulin response was much worse after not eating any carbs and he was pre-diabetic. Not only did he lose heaps of muscle, he also become quite sick. Neither twin gained ANY body-fat at all

After exposing rats to the same diet, they worked out that a diet high in carbohydrates OR fats alone, actually didn’t cause them to over-eat, as was the same result with the twins. So, they then experimented with foods that have both fats & sugar together. All of a sudden the rats ate at more regular intervals, and gained a lot of weight.

This rat experiment suggests that it is the COMBINATION of fat and sugar in a particular food/meal that causes us to over-eat. Further studies showed that this combination of macronutrients basically switched off the brains reward system, overpowering the body’s natural ability to know when it has had enough to eat.

What was the perfect combination? 50% fats, 50% sugar. The closer the food was to this ratio of fat & sugar, the more people preferred it. Man-made, processed foods are the ONLY foods available to us that have both the macronutrients together. Natural food sources only contain ONE OR THE OTHER. If you want to remain healthy and maintain a healthy body composition, don’t eat processed foods