Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet Vs Usual Diet On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Adolescent Boys

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ByCrossFitApril 24, 2019

A growing body of evidence suggests added sugars play a role in the development and/or progression of fatty liver disease. This 2018 trial, led by Miriam Vos (Emory) and Jeffrey Schwimmer (UCSD), considered whether removing sugar from the diet could improve fatty liver disease in children.

Forty adolescent boys were randomized to one of two diets for 8 weeks. Members of the control group continued to eat their usual diet. The treatment group was instructed to eat less than 3% of total calories from free (added) sugars. Investigators provided substantial support to help the subjects achieve this goal. First, study staff went to each participant’s household and replaced all sugar-containing foods with low-sugar or sugar-free substitutes (no artificial sweeteners were allowed). Each week, the family would then receive two shipments containing a complete diet, produced in a metabolic kitchen. They were instructed to eat no foods except those provided by the study staff. Eighteen out of 20 subjects successfully reduced free sugar intake to <3% of their total calories; by comparison, the control group consumed, on average, 10% of its calories from added sugars, which is in line with population averages.

The authors note:

Reduction of free sugars involves decreasing a number of dietary sugars including glucose, fructose, and sucrose commonly consumed in sweetened foods and beverages and in naturally sweet fruit juices. Biologically, fructose and fructose-containing sugars such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup appear to be of greater importance in elevating risk of liver fat accumulation than glucose, but both are sources of excess calories. Fructose increases hepatic de novo lipogenesis in a dose-dependent fashion and de novo lipogenesis has been shown to be abnormally unregulated in patients with NAFLD.

There was no difference in total calorie intake between groups, though the treatment group lost 2.0 kg on average. The treatment group also saw a mean reduction in liver fat from 25% to 17% (-6.23%), as well as significant improvements in secondary markers of liver health. Individual-level data shows changes in markers of liver health were small and inconsistent in members of the control group, but the majority of subjects in the treatment group saw improvements.

The authors conclude, “In this study of adolescent boys with NAFLD, 8 weeks of provision of a diet low in free sugar content compared with usual diet resulted in significant improvement in hepatic steatosis.” In other words, the trial showed that simply restricting sugar for 8 weeks in adolescent boys reduces liver fat content.

This trial must be seen as preliminary. Most of the subjects were Hispanic boys, and these results may not replicate in other populations. Additionally, the trial was too short to determine whether the benefits will continue to accumulate or plateau with continued sugar restriction—while the treatment led to improvements, all subjects still met the criteria for NAFLD when the trial was over. Finally, the highly-intensive intervention used here is unlikely to scale to larger clinical trials, let alone general practice.

These results should, however, be viewed in light of the fact that there is no existing pharmaceutical treatment for NAFLD. The current prescription for children with NAFLD—exercise, calorie restriction, and weight loss—is inconsistently effective for various reasons including compliance challenges. It is easier for adolescents to remove sugar from their diet than it is to sustainably reduce all calories, however. If larger trials were to replicate these results in the future, it would suggest sugar restriction could be a safe, effective tool to reverse NAFLD in adolescents.

Comments on Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet Vs Usual Diet On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Adolescent Boys

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Matthieu Dubreucq
January 2nd, 2020 at 1:55 pm
Commented on: Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet Vs Usual Diet On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Adolescent Boys

Thanks for attacking the false myth that free sugars are "good" or at lease better than sugar.

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Mary Dan Eades
April 28th, 2019 at 9:29 pm
Commented on: Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet Vs Usual Diet On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Adolescent Boys

Shakha Gillin you are spot on. They need pure, clean water. Back in the 80s and 90s even, we were beginning to see 8, 9, and 10 year old kids with significant obesity and DM2 (and NAFLD though we didn't call it that then; we just knew their enzymes were elevated and they didn't likely drink alcohol.) And NAFLD is one of the earliest telltale signs of the metabolic machinery's going haywire. The typical adolescent and teen diet consists of heavily processed wheat or corn, bad fats (aka 'vegetable' fats, by which I mean industrially processed seed oils), and HFCS. It's all morphed into a variety of shapes and colors, but at its core, most packaged food is just those things. And they are a winning formula for stuffing fat into the hepatocytes, which may very well be the first domino in the cascade leading toward a lifetime of metabolic syndrome. It's just heartbreaking when you think of it. And the remedy is so simple: just feed them meat, vegetables, some fruits, nuts, and seeds, little starch, and no sugar (and I'd add no vegetable oils) and stand back and watch what happens. It's like a miracle

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Shakha Gillin
April 25th, 2019 at 6:06 am
Commented on: Effect of a Low Free Sugar Diet Vs Usual Diet On Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Adolescent Boys

At least 1/2 of obese teens have NAFLD. What’s more alarming is that 10% of all teens, not just obese, have NAFLD.


And we don’t routinely test or check for NAFLD. ALT is not a routine test checked during a check up. An ALT test is done with a comprehensive metabolic panel, usually for another purpose- during an acute illness, emergency room visit, abdominal pain. Over the last 5-10 years, I have been seeing an increasing number of patients with mildly-moderately elevated ALT. I usually chalk it up to an acute phase reaction/viral infection, but I suspect many of these are NAFLD.


So it’s occurring in non-obese patients, and we aren’t testing for it....it’s a hidden time bomb.


While I never saw NAFLD years ago, I now see it. It will be epidemic and then endemic soon, if it isn’t already. This article supports an academically simple solution for the reversal of NAFLD. Limiting SSBs may prevent and reverse NAFLD. The recent policy recommendations by the AAP and AHA to restrict SSBs are a step in the right direction. I would highly discourage giving your kids anything other than water or milk. They don’t need juice, lemonade, Gatorade, sports drinks, and energy drinks.

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