© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Saint Luke’s Scientist Pens Viral Op-Ed On Dangers Of Sugar

Saint Luke's Health System

 

An op-ed piece on the addictive nature of sugar that ran in The New York Times Tuesday and shot to the top of the newspaper’s “Most Emailed” list early Wednesday was co-written by Kansas City research scientist James J. DiNicolantonio.

DiNicolantonio is a cardiovascular research specialist at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute. According to his bio on Saint Luke’s Health System’s website, the 2010 graduate of the University of Buffalo School of Pharmacy is the author or co-author of more than 100 medical publications.

And oh, he’s all of 28 years old.

DiNicolantonio was out of town for the holidays and unavailable for an interview, according to a spokesperson for Saint Luke’s. But his bio notes that he serves as associate editor of the British Medical Journal’s Open Heart and his research focuses on cardiovascular health and disease.

DiNicolantonio co-authored The Times op-ed piece with Sean C. Lucan, an assistant professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and no slouch himself when it comes to provoking the food establishment.

Lucan, who focuses on how urban food environments influence what people eat, made newspaper headlines a couple of years ago when he questioned New York City’s plan to reduce salt consumption in packaged foods and restaurants.

Lucan told the New York Post that the city’s war on salt was “misguided” and potentially dangerous.

“My concern is that they’re focusing on a single ingredient that the food industry is going to have to replace with something — and what they replace it with might be more damaging,” he told the Post.

DiNicolantonio and Lucan’s op-ed piece in The New York Times, “Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere, and Addictive,” argues that refined sugar is more insidious and dangerous than salt.

“In a recent study, we showed that sugar, perhaps more than salt, contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease,” DiNicolantonio and Lucan wrote. “Evidence is growing, too, that eating too much sugar can lead to fatty liver disease, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and kidney disease.”

Not only is sugar dangerous, the co-authors assert, it’s addictive in the same way that drugs are addictive. It produces at least three symptoms consistent with substance abuse and dependence, they say: cravings, tolerance and withdrawal.

DiNicolantonio and Lucan recommend several approaches to kicking the sugar habit, including making foods and drinks with added sugar more expensive, removing sugar-sweetened beverages from places like schools and hospitals, and regulating sugar-added products.

Those approaches, however, might have unintended consequences, they say, such as prompting the food industry to inject even more harmful products into processed foods.

“A better approach to sugar rehab is to promote the consumption of whole, natural foods,” they wrote. “Substituting whole foods for sweet industrial concoctions may be a hard sell, but in the face of an industry that is exploiting our biological nature to keep us addicted, it may be the best solution for those who need that sugar fix.”

A spokesperson for The Sugar Association, a trade group founded by members of the U.S. sugar industry, could not be reached for comment.

Dan Margolies, editor of the Heartland Health Monitor team, is based at KCUR.

Dan Margolies has been a reporter for the Kansas City Business Journal, The Kansas City Star, and KCUR Public Radio. He retired as a reporter in December 2022 after a 37-year journalism career.
KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and award-winning podcasts.
Your donation helps keep nonprofit journalism free and available for everyone.