Hi Rory

I was once a part of the anti-sugar crowd. But no longer. Some good pieces on sugar if you are interested:

http://carbsanitydiscussion.blogspot.com.au/#nabble-td4947792
http://co2factor.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/fructose-to-rescue.html

That 'sugar is poison' has now become an indisputable fact it seems, much like the campaign against saturated fat, so it's very strange to read studies which show that no only is it not the case that sugar is culprit number 1, but it actually exhibits some beneficial effects.

When people say they have given up sugar it often means they've given up products containing sugar, and sugar isn't the only ingredient in those products .The most common sugary foods are often packaged along with wheat and seed oil (and guess what those things do!) so a no-sugar or low-sugar diet is actually reducing more than just sugar. Those are variables which can't be overlooked.

p.s congrats on losing the weight!

Hi Steve. I will check out the references. Yes, sugar/fructose is added to many/most processed foods so obviously you are right in saying that by junking added sugar you are removing heaps of other stuff as well. But that's the point! In my opinion, a big part of the global "diabesity" problem is that now-near-ubiquitous fructose does something bad to appetite control.

Accordingly, the rule of thumb of removing sugary products seems to be powerful in promoting weight loss for many people because it produces a reduction in food cravings, and the return of natural appetite controls. Post-sugar, we eat less of everything because we're thinking less about food, snacking less and eating smaller portions. Satiety and "self discipline" return not long after sugar/fructose is pushed out the door, and suddenly we're not eating everything we can get our hands on because that no longer has appeal.

No-one I think is saying that removing sugar works only because suddenly we have avoided (just) the "empty calories" that were coming in the form of sugar. That's part of it, but the profound thing is the helpful dynamics unleashed by the return of natural appetite controls.

Beyond the weight/calorie issues, modern doses of fructose seem to be a key driver of chronic diseases that it would be good to avoid like the plague. That is, I first stopped eating added sugar in the hope it would help me shed excess weight (it did) but after further reading that quickly morphed into not eating added sugar because of the chronic diseases - diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, etc - it seems to fuel, one way or another.

The armies of scientists currently busy with other stuff in these areas one day will start looking at the things that matter, and will eventually will be able to tell us much more about the various complicated processes behind the effects described above. Until then, everyday people currently trending towards diabesity have a simple rule - don't eat anything sweet - that for many will prove to be a "silver bullet" for weightloss and improved health.

Dr Stanton has been banging away about the dietary evils of added sugar for decades and she is being vindicated by incoming evidence. She has long been a champion for good health in Australia. Meanwhile, Gary Taubes's fascinating book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" provides an eye-opening history of what has been good and bad and seriously reckless in nutrition science over the past century and before, including the disastrous judgments by less than a dozen influential but ham-fisted US nutritionists who in the 1970s inadvertently fast-tracked the world's diabesity epidemic.

Thanks for your comprehensive reply, Dr Stanton, on the state of evidence linking added sugar to obesity and chronic disease. In particular, naturally I'm pleased that you agree that "we have no evidence that sugar consumption in Australia has fallen".

That's an important point, because it confirms that there is no "Australian Paradox". The high-profile claim has been that per-capita refined sugar consumption in Australia has undergone a "substantial decline" over "the past 30 years" as obesity increased dramatically, so sugar consumption and obesity are unrelated.

As you may have noticed, I've documented in some detail the problems with the published and purportedly peer-reviewed Australian Paradox paper but it's been hard going. You are only the second high-profile nutritionist/scientist who has been prepared to publicly agree with my analysis (http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/research-causes-stir-over-sugars-role-in-obesity-20120330-1w3e5.html ).

I'm an economist, not a scientist, so even my close friends have wondered why I think I can be in the business of correcting the published work of a couple of Australia's most influential food scientists.

I try to explain to them that my critique of Australian Paradox is a simple empirical matter, not a question of "science". I'm sure that, over the years, academic papers have been revealed as deeply flawed in a huge variety of ways. Perhaps the most straightforward way is for it to be revealed that the authors were unaware that their preferred indicator - in this case, the "apparent consumption of sugar" - had been discontinued as unreliable by the national statistical agency more than a decade before the publication of the disputed paper!

For incompetence, that's hard to beat. But the authors also presented a chart showing a 30% rise in sales of sugary soft-drinks as part of their evidence that sugar consumption had fallen! (Yes, huh?) Further unmistakable confirmation that the authors literally did not know what they were talking about came in their initial rebuttal of my straightforward critique, in the form of a claim based on nothing that ethanol production - which has increased rapidly in Australia in the past decade - was consuming up to 14kg per person per annum of Australia's "available sugar". That is, the consumption of raw sugar by cars via ethanol usage has been rising fast while the consumption of sugar by humans has been falling.

That would indeed have been a large blow to my critique, but if it were true I would not have produced a critique. The real figure for the consumption of Australian sugar by Australian cars is zero or close enough: as many know off the top of their heads, ethanol production in Australia uses as feedstock mainly wheat and sorghum but also molasses, the latter a by-product of sugar production. That is, it's not a case of sugar OR ethanol but sugar AND ethanol (http://ethanolfacts.com.au/myths ).

Given that extraordinarily sloppy treatment of the readily available information on sugar consumption, Dr Stanton, I assume you agree with me that the Australian Paradox paper should be corrected or withdrawn, because the paper as it stands continues to be cited by sugar sellers across the globe as "evidence" that modern levels of consumption of sugary foods and drinks are unrelated to obesity. It is rare for such a deeply flawed paper and its invalid conclusion to survive long enough and be so widely embraced as to become a menace to public health, but here we are (#6 at http://www.australianparadox.com/ ).

I note from your remarks above that you often have argued the invalidity of the Australian Paradox with your colleagues. Do they listen? Why is it so hard to get people to concede the obvious point that sugar consumption has not fallen? I'm 46 years old and I recall clearly enough what was available in grocery stores, cafes and service stations when I was in high school back in 1980 (#13 in http://www.australianparadox.com/ ). Over the past 30 years, many sugary foods have gone from occasional special treats to being everyday staples.

Many of us admire you, Dr Stanton, for your tireless campaigning - spanning most of our lifetimes - for better nutrition and better nutrition advice. Your public commitment above to devote the rest of your distinguished career to - amongst other things - campaigning for the quantity of added sugar to be included on food labels so that the public is aware of what they are buying is just another example of a life well lived, of someone who has "made a difference" (and in the right direction!).

I expect that ultimately you will be successful on the food-label front. In the meantime, Dr Stanton, I'm concerned that influential food and beverage companies citing Australian Paradox will be successful in their efforts to get the Australian Government later this year to "water down" its nutrition advice to limit/reduce the consumption of added sugar. Please do what you can to make sure that doesn't happen. (When are those new official guidelines finalised?)

Rising rates of obesity, diabetes and related maladies are the biggest public-health issue in the world, and removing added sugar from our diets - or at least minimising consumption - obviously is a low-hanging fruit in society's battle against "diabesity". Dr Stanton, please promise us that you will fight hard in the coming battle to maintain the integrity of Australia's official nutrition guidelines.

Agreed, Dr Stanton. And I hope that no-one with any following argues against the general recommendation of at least half an hour of brisk walking each day. After all, we did not evolve as "the walking ape" to spend our days lying on the couch watching TV, much as that is exactly what I love doing on rainy weekends with my newspapers and books and kids. (By the way, the link above is a dud unless the final "t" is reinstated.)

Rory,
What about the claims of Gillespie about exercise being useless for fat loss (and the fact that it is well supported by evidence)? Or Taubes' similar claims?

Also wondering if you had used your statistical knowledge to try and correlate the rise obesity and diabetes with fructose levels? In Australia or any other country?

Rory,
Were you going to comment on the data that Rosemary referred to suggesting that your fructose and poor health in modern society ISN'T as robust as your seem to suggest or is this merely a vehicle to promote your Anti-Australian Paradox position.
If the Australian paradox is shown to be null and void, does it prove any of your assertions re fructose in your opening statement?
Or your ridiculous theories on why you think she takes issue with some of Gillespie's claims? Turf war or 'secret handshake' - really?

Hi David. Australian Paradox already has been shown to be invalid. Beyond that, excessive levels of added sugar/fructose clearly are a major driver of obesity and diabetes in Australia and globally. There's now a legitimate debate about the EXTENT to which the damage is driven by excessive sugar/fructose and how much is due to excessive fats, (other) carbs and physical inactivity. What thousands are finding is that simply removing added sugar/fructose is a powerful driver of weight-loss. Adding moderate exercise would boost general wellbeing and healthiness. I'm a big supporter of unlimited levels of brisk walking. An extra 15 minutes of brisk walking or an extra 115 minutes. It's all good.

Hi again David. I believe moderate exercise is good for everyone, boosting general wellbeing and healthiness. As I note below, I'm a big supporter of unlimited levels of brisk walking. An extra 15 minutes of brisk walking or an extra 115 minutes. It's all good. On fructose, sucrose (table sugar) is 50% fructose, so there's not much new to say. As you know, my strong view based on the data is that excessive consumption of added sugar/fructose is a key driver of global "diabesity", so reducing consumption is an obvious low-hanging fruit in society's battle against what has become the most important public-health issue of our time.

Thanks for the response Rory but the question was SPECIFICALLY regarding exercise for weight loss (and thus Taubes' and Gillespie's claims that science doesn't support a benefit)?

The other question was how well fructose intake and diabesity levels are correlated in society?

>As you know, my strong view based on the data is that excessive consumption of added sugar/fructose is a key driver of global "diabesity"<

What data is that based on please?

With your knowledge of the sugar intake stats, could you please tell us when in history average human intake was the 10-15g that David Gillespie recommends? What level of intake could be correlated with the increases in obesity and diabetes?
We know that correlation doesn't equal causation but would you use these figures as a guide to define 'excessive levels of added sugar/fructose"?

>What thousands are finding is that simply removing added sugar/fructose is a powerful driver of weight-loss.<

And if we head on over the the 'Wheat Belly' Facebook page we can also find many thousands of people who have found eliminating wheat "a powerful driver of weight-loss", similar for vegetarian lifestyles as well as paleo - so what conclusions can we draw from these anecdotes? Maybe the common thread that people eat less processed foods? A far cry from the 'fructose is poison' claim that Rosemary was initially referring to, no?

Sorry for the delay, David. I was pressed for time earlier, on the way to the beach to muck around with the kids in the winter sun for a few hours. I find that simply getting out and about in the fresh air is an excellent and enjoyable exercise for everyone. On your specific question of exercise and weightloss, I think Gillespie is right in saying that combining high levels of exercise with high levels of sugar/fructose consumption is a loser's game, a recipe for disappointment on weightloss. Many of us have been there. I believe that our Olympians need to do extreme amounts of exercise to be competitive (Go Aussie!) and that everyday middle-aged slobs (like me) should walk briskly for (say) 30-60 minutes most days to stay healthy and keep our bodies - including our natural appetite controls - working well. In between those two groups, I think that fitness trainers need to look fit to maintain credibility with their paying customers. In my opinion, however, once we've removed the added sugar/fructose and done that 30 minutes of brisk walking per day - a great combination for easy weightloss over time - paying for "fitness training" is an optional - but costly and unnecessary - extra, a bit like paying for bottled water instead of just drinking it from the tap for free.

It's interesting that real athletes are finding, after their competitive days are over and their middle-aged spreads are becoming excessive, that minimising added sugar/fructose is much more effective for weightloss than unsustainable levels of hardslog exercise, even with someone who looks fit yelling at them. You might want to discuss this point with Peter Fitzsimons, once close to "the fittest man in Australia". Check out the final section of yesterday's The Fitz Files at http://m.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/look-for-blue-and-green-ricky-next-year-20120706-21mtt.html and the video at http://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/transcripts/article/-/13144949/sweet-poison/

The evidence on excessive sugar/fructose being the biggest-single driver of obesity and diabetes boils down to "diabesity" showing up in previously unafflicted local populations some time after refined sugar was introduced and became popular. Also, I find quite compelling the recent observation that long captive Rhesus monkeys - whose genomes are a 93% match with those of humans - became diabetic within 6-12 months of starting to drink human-sized serves (75g) of fructose daily via a standard Kool Aid mix with water (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-8062.2011.00298.x/abstract ). Going the other way, there's clear evidence now via thousands of people including me that simply removing added sugar/fructose for many tends to reverse obesity while also reducing signs of metabolic syndrome in general.

There seems to be no downside to removing added sugar except that one's foodlife is a bit less exciting. Of course, that cost is more than offset by the unexpected pleasure of becoming lean/leaner again without much effort, and no longer wasting much of the day planning the next snack. In my mind, the main debate now should be about whether excessive sugar/fructose consumption by itself is sufficient to generate the diabesity damage or whether other refined carbs are necessary as well. I favour the former view, in part because of what we now know about fructose's unique "metabolic pathway" via the liver (driving fatty-liver disease), because those monkeys didn't need other carbs, and because excess sugar/fructose also does something bad to natural appetite controls, by itself encouraging greater consumption of everything including cereal-based products.

Of course, I'm not a scientist so that's only my version of what's going on. The hard scientific evidence on excess added sugar/fructose driving diabetes - "the sugar sickness" - as it has emerged over the past century or two is well documented by Gary Taubes in Chapter 6 of his fascinating book "Good Calories, Bad Calories". Indeed, that charter should be required reading for everyone involved in nutrition and public health in Australia and globally. As noted earlier, the diabetes scourge reportedly just kept turning up - as the British Empire expanded across the globe - soon after sugar was introduced and became popular in distinct local populations.

Despite the hard facts always strongly suggesting that excess sugar/fructose and diabetes go hand in hand almost like smoking and lung cancer, "science" lost its way on this matter. As Gary Taubes has documented, incompetent judgements by "powerful authority figures" saw the real evidence disregarded and any debate squashed. In his account, an influential textbook by US diabetes king-pin Elliot Joslin helped misinform a generation of nutrition scientists, often leaving them clueless on the real causes of diabetes. That problem may well be alive and well in Australia, if the spectacularly false quote - "There is an absolute consensus that sugar in food does not cause diabetes" - marketed in best-selling Low GI diet books - including "the diabetes & pre-diabetes handbook" (2010) - is anything to go by.

If anyone but the authors takes that ridiculous statement seriously, then Australian diabetics are in trouble. It's more than a little scary that one of the authors who fumbled the sugar/fructose facts so incompetently in that false statement and in the dodgy "Australian Paradox" paper - Dr Alan Barclay - reportedly “also works for Diabetes Australia (NSW) and sits on the Editorial Board of their (sic) consumer magazine Conquest and their (sic) health professional magazine Diabetes Management Journal” (http://daa.asn.au/ ).

David, on that first question above, I just noticed that I do have a reasonably solid answer. Dr Stanton in one of her early books noted that "By the eighteenth century, sugar consumption had increased to two kilograms a year" [p. 47, "Eating for Peak Performance" (1994)]. That's about 6 grams of sucrose per day, before whatever fructose came via honey, flowers and fruits.

The average amount of refined sugar consumed in Australia today is uncertain given that there are no hard official estimates, because the ABS stopped counting after 1998-99 (the main problem for some time was that it couldn't come close to reliably counting imports). But ABARE data on "sugar availability" and its charts showing uptrends in sugary imports suggest that a figure of 50kg per person per annum - give or take - might be a reasonable guess for recent years (but it could be much higher depending on the unknown volume of sugar in imports of food and softdrink concentrates; see Figure 1 and the associated discussion at #10 in http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf/NutrientsLETTER2405122.pdf ).

Rough guesstimates of 50kg per person per annum today versus a tiny 2kg back in the 1700s make a mockery of the claim by Dr Alan Barclay and Professor Jennie Brand-Miller in their rebuttal of my Australian Paradox critique that fructose was never "scarce", that humans today probably are not eating much if any more fructose today than in earlier centuries. That claim is wrong by perhaps a multiple of 10 or more, but that didn't stop it being published in a lame rebuttal that included the mis-spelling of my name as "Roberston" - all peer reviewed by experts you understand (http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf/RESPONSE-TO-ROBERTSON.pdf ).

Those authors also claimed in their initial rebuttal that I'm wrong because up to 14kg per person worth of sugar in Australia today is consumed by cars via ethanol production. The correct figure is zero or thereabouts.

In any case, David, the important message to take away is that minimising added sugar/fructose - everything sweet including fruitjuice but not fruit - is a simple and effective way for many to reverse their trends to obesity and diabetes. For thousands of everyday Australians, that's been a revelation after years of hard slog and disappointment. Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of second-order modifications that can and should be pursued once removing added sugar/fructose has allowed natural appetite controls to resume operation.

David, the answer to your second question is in my previous response. To save us both time, my strong view is that exercise is good and high levels of added sugar consumption are bad. As you kare aware, most of what I know and think is relevant on the latter I've documented at http://www.australianparadox.com/

You are passionate in your dislike of what Gillespie and Taubes and what they have been saying, David, but they are only the messengers. The underlying facts remain the underlying facts, no matter how long they have been overlooked or ignored by people with this incentive or that.

Like some others David, I gave up my expensive gym membership soon after I started losing weight by not eating added sugar. Yes, it is a pity for the pay-for-fitness and low-GI industries that something as simple as minimising added sugar is able to reverse what for many individuals (including me) had previously found to be an unstoppable trend towards obesity and diabetes. But it is a fabulous result for public health, or at least will be after serious and respected nutritionist and scientists like Dr Stanton stop being soft on influential lightweights like the Australian-Paradox duo at the University of Sydney, still retailing their clearly false conclusion that unnaturally high levels of sugar consumption and obesity are unrelated, so too sugar and diabetes.

The false conclusions produced and distributed by its highest-profile scientists are an embarrassment to the University of Sydney, and the Australian science community beyond, yet barely anyone has been prepared to say that - on the life-shortening issue of added sugar, obesity and diabetes - the once-admired low-GI Empress has no clothes.

David, on the quality of the evidence on the obvious link between added sugar and diabetes, please get back to me after you have read and absorbed Chapter 6 of "Good Calories and Bad Calories". It's got nothing to do with Taubes and Gillespie. The key people with strong evidence here seem to be Frederick Allen, Haven Emerson, Aharon Cohen, Ian Prior, George Campbell, T. L. "Peter" Cleave and John Yudkin, amongst others for sure. These are real scientists with real scientific observations. No-one is making this up. Also, David, an "absolute consensus" is when EVERYONE agrees. Not when a debate is raging all around. I've also just responded to your second set of comments in a post above. Sorry I can't help you further.

David, I have detailed that the academic paper "The Australian Paradox: A Substantial Decline in Sugars Intake over the Same Timeframe that Overweight and Obesity Have Increased“ - published by Dr Alan W. Barclay and Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, Australia's highest-profile academic defenders of added sugar in food - is deeply flawed, based as it is on a misreading of the available data, including a preferred series the authors were unaware had been discontinued as unreliable by the ABS more than a decade earlier. I have demonstrated that their featured conclusion via that deeply flawed analysis - that sugar consumption (supposedly down) and obesity (up) are unrelated - is false, and Dr Stanton has agreed. I have explained that the mistaken conclusion has become a menace to public health (#6 at http://www.australianparadox.com/ ), and I've campaigned enthusiastically for the published and supposedly peer-reviewed academic paper to be corrected or retracted by the University of Sydney. I make no apologies for any of that. Only the authors have claimed my analysis is wrong (as they would), despite any number of opportunities for hundreds of serious scientists and nutritionists to critique my work over recent months, including on this website over the past week or two. I'm happy to respond to any criticism of my efforts in this Australian Paradox episode. It's well past time, however, for serious people who now know that the paper - and the associated misinformation on obesity and diabetes - should be corrected to speak up. It's Diabetes Week for goodness sake, and one of the sugar-is-not-a-problem campaigners is the main public spokeman for Diabetes Australia. It would be funny if it were not so serious. Thanks everyone for your time here in recent days.

Despite your unnecessary flattery, David, I am going to agree with you on one point: Showing that national sugar consumption (per capita) increased rather than declined over the 30 years to 2010 does NOT "prove" that increased consumption "caused" increased obesity. Yes, I agree. And nor would a reduction in national sugar consumption prove it didn't. Obviously it's the distribution of the sugar consumption that matters; that is, those prone to be sugar hogs decade after decade - me, until last year - are the ones most likely to be swelling the overweight/obesity stats. Beyond that, David, the point you have refused to understand and/or concede is that I am not talking about "a possible statistical error". I am talking about a documented case of negligent analysis - and avoidance - of the relevant sugar data producing the clearly false conclusion of a "substantial decline" in sugar consumption "over the past 30 years".

Consumption of refined sugar clearly has not declined - as confirmed above by Dr Rosemary Stanton - and it's probably risen quite a bit, given increased imports of sugary food. The ABS didn't stop counting sugar consumption after 1998-99 - something the authors failed to notice! - because it could find any: in fact, the ABS's long-standing counting methodologies simply were overwhelmed by the increased and varied portions of added sugar in rapidly growing imports of manufactured foods.

The authors' false reading on the relevant sugar data was geared into the general conclusion that sugar consumption and obesity are unrelated, so the overweight and diabetic can keep sucking it down willy-nilly, no problem: "The present analysis indicates the existence of an Australian Paradox, i.e., an inverse relationship between secular trends in the prevalence of obesity prevalence [sic] (increasing by ~300%) and the consumption of refined sugar over the same time frame (declining by ~20%). The findings challenge the implicit assumption that taxes and other measures to reduce intake of soft drinks will be an effective strategy in global efforts to reduce obesity".

If lightweight analysis of key data and a spectacularly false conclusion were produced in a paper by a second-year uni student, we'd tend to just fail it and move on. But this particularly woeful standard of analysis alongside its somewhat dangerous false conclusion was published by Australia's most high-profile academic defenders of added sugar - Dr Alan Barclay and Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, with their low-GI approach's undisclosed conflict of interest in sugar/fructose being perceived as harmless alongside their pro-sugar commercial interests more generally - in a supposedly peer-reviewed academic journal. Interestingly, one of the authors also was the (only) "Guest Editor" of the relevant "Special Issue" and the paper originally was the project of a Masters student, although apparently she was smart enough not to allow her name to remain on the finished product that her supervisors rushed to publish, self-evidently without competent peer-review (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients/special_issues/carbohydrates ).

After I'd noticed and documented all that - see especially the authors' own key charts at #10 on the LHS of http://www.australianparadox.com/ - AWB and JBM responded with a clownish rebuttal (#2 in link above). They claimed I was wrong because, based on nothing, they estimate that up to 14kg per person per annum of Australia's available sugar is consumed by motor vehicles not humans. In fact - as many know off the top of their heads - ethanol production in Australia uses mainly wheat, sorghum and molasses as feedstock, with the amount of sugar used trivial at best (http://ethanolfacts.com.au/myths ).

David, in a universal challenge I'm offering $20,000 cash to anyone who can prove that my critique is incorrect, to anyone who can prove that - as (falsely) claimed by ABW and JBM - sugar consumption declined substantially between 1980 and 2010. Alas, the cash wind-fall remains unclaimed. Not even University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Michael Spence has been able to find one scientist amongst hundreds on his books with the ability to grab the cash (#12). It would be good for this "Conversation", David, if you could have a quick look at the authors' key charts - Figures 1-4 in #10 - and get back to the group with your considered opinion on the evidence: whether sugar consumption is more likely to have increased or declined over the past 30 years.

David, your main gripe here in recent days has been that Gillespie and Taubes supposedly have been misrepresenting the original scientific studies to which they refer. Let's just say that I'm unconvinced. But if you are right, then you should keep slamming them at every opportunity. Given your strong view that original studies are where we should get our facts, however, I would have expected you be more supportive of my efforts on Australian Paradox. After all, I went to the high-profile published study, as you advise, raised my eyebrows and then demonstrated that the authors' data analysis is - shall we say - deeply flawed, and the main conclusion clearly false and somewhat dangerous. With your strong view on the sanctity of published research, David, I would have thought you'd be keen to get a big angry crew organised, and together we all could all march up Broadway to the University of Sydney, handing hands and placards while chanting "ABW and JBM: Retract Australian Paradox Now!".

David, in yet another response to your repeated question, Dr Alan Barclay and Professor Brand-Miller's argument that humans probably are not eating much if any more fructose today than in earlier centuries is contained their initial clownish rebuttal of my critique (http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf/RESPONSE-TO-ROBERTSON.pdf ). If you're still struggling to find it, it's under the heading "Fructose was not 'scarce'", exactly one page after their similarly false but even more obviously silly claim that motor vehicles not humans have been eating up to 14kg per person per annum of Australia's available sugar. As discussed above, on Dr Stanton's own figuring (2kg of added sugar in the 1700s), AWB and JBW's silly fructose claim probably is wrong by a factor in the double-digits, while the correct figure for sugar consumed by ethanol production is zero or thereabouts. Readers, as you know, sugar is not used in ethanol production in Australia (Table 6.1 in http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=961783&nodeId=c5006d5e6145ec6c55231148c819855e&fn=ACCC%20Petrol%20Monitoring%20Report%20Chapter%206.pdf ).

It is ironic that, as low-GI advocates with strong links to the sugar industry, AWB and JBW were clueless on this point (and others). After all, the fact that sugar is not used in ethanol production is documented by CSR here: http://ethanolfacts.com.au/myths , while the low-GI industry's fundamentally flawed story - the low-GI approach to nutrition is fundamentally flawed because fructose (fully 50% of refined sugar) has a super-low GI of 19 - is featured just across the road: http://www.csrsugar.com.au/Sugar-And-Your-Health/Sugar.aspx .

So, David, much as it must pain you, you'll now concede that AWB and JBM have some errors to correct?

Now, David, I assume you looked at the authors' four key charts at #10 on http://www.australianparadox.com/ . Yes? So why are all four indicators of sugar consumption in the authors' own charts trending UP, when Dr Alan Barclay and Professor Brand-Miller have published the claim of "a consistent and substantial DECLINE in total refined or added sugar by Australians over the past 30 years"? Dr Rosemary Stanton and Professor Boyd Swinburn of Deakin University both have confirmed that the major conclusion here - "an inverse relationship" between sugar consumption (down) and obesity (up), the Australian Paradox! - belies the facts. David, it's unreasonable to say, "Oh well, they got that wrong" and leave it at that. You rabbit on for acres about the sanctity of published research, and then you have no problem with Australia's highest-profile academic defenders of sugar - with Australia's deepest academic links to the sugar industry and other sugar sellers via their Low-GI enterprise - publishing a deeply flawed assessment of the data with a spectacularly false conclusion - an "inverse relationship" between added sugar and obesity! - in a supposedly peer-reviewed journal?

David, I recently spent a week in Cape York and visited one of the Cape's many remote Aboriginal communities. Thumb-tacked on the noticeboard outside the (one) community grocery store was a report from the Menzies School documenting that sugary products - particularly softdrinks - are a huge part of dollars spent at the store (something like 95% of the softdrinks sold were full-strength, not diet). That record of grocery-store sales is a pretty clear guide to what a large group of people are eating on the way to becoming fat and sick. So it's clear to public-health professionals that sugary foods and drinks are a key driver of Aboriginal and other Australians' growing problems with obesity, diabetes and other chronic diet-related diseases (http://www.nt.gov.au/health/healthdev/health_promotion/bushbook/volume2/chap3/food.html ). Accordingly, minimising added sugar in our food supply is an obvious low-hanging fruit in the battle against obesity, diabetes - "diabesity" - and other "diseases of affluence".

So, David, there is no Australian Paradox, yet you are comfortable with Australia's overweight and diabetic kids and adults being misinformed via that published paper's main message - an "inverse relationship" between added sugar and obesity - that there's no need to greatly reduce - Dr Stanton says "minimise" - the consumption of added sugar, including via softdrinks. Are you kidding me? And look who's citing Australian Paradox (at #6 in the link above).

Moreover, both the Australian Diabetes Council and the Heart Foundation - not to mention the equally clueless Nutrition Australia and the Dietitians Association of Australia - are "soft" on added sugar in part because they have swallowed hook, line and sinker the sugar-is-not-the-problem message that flows from the spectacularly false conclusion - "an inverse relationship" between added sugar and obesity - in Australian Paradox. The paper clearly has become a menace to public health.

I know the mere mention of his name drives you a bit batty, David, but Gillespie yesterday published an important piece on the strong link between sugar and diabetes, also highlighting (co-author) Dr Alan Barclay's disturbing association with the Australian Diabetes Council on the one hand, and the Low-GI and sugar-selling industries on the other (http://www.raisin-hell.com/2012/07/australian-diabetes-council-needs-to.html ).

David, you go on and on (and on) about Gillespie and Taubes supposedly not paying enough respect to the power of exercise or whatever in their books (I remain unconvinced), but you must concede that there is an important difference between publishing popular books and publishing supposedly peer-reviewed science in academic journals. Errors and misjudgments are a dime a dozen in popular books and we can take them or leave them.

But science journals - like Nutrients - are supposed to be where we get our facts; they are supposed to contain the current state of scientific knowledge and nothing more. Serious errors and spectacularly false conclusions are not supposed to get past the peer-review stage in science journals. In the hopefully rare event that false facts and conclusions get past that stage, the published paper is supposed to be corrected or retracted.

Readers, that's how "science" is supposed to work. If published papers containing false facts and conclusions are allowed to stand, scientific progress is stopped in its tracks, or goes backwards.

I was thinking on the topic of "retraction" the other day and - in the comments section of a Nature article - I stumbled across a distinguished scientist at the University of Sydney who'd had a terrible time trying to maintain the integrity of the scientific record in his field, as the ignored referee of what he viewed as a shonky paper: "The paper in question was scientifically flawed, grossly distorted the literature in the field clearly to progress the authors' stated personal agenda. The statistical analyses were erroneous. I recommended rejection, but after being sent a revised version in which virtually none of my extensive list of initial criticisms was addressed I stated that extensive corrections were required. When it then appeared on-line in advance... The paper in question should be retracted. I can understand that the Editors might be embarrassed that this paper slipped through in to print. But their failure to take any steps to date to address the situation that has arisen now leads to an impression of complicity. Is there a higher authority individuals such as me can turn to for advice?" (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/478026a.html ).

That sounds familiar! No, he wasn't one of the referees of Australian Paradox before publication; as I've said, they were either non-existent, incompetent or - as in this case - ignored. It's good to know, however, that at least one scientist at the University of Sydney is still fighting the good fight. Where are the rest?

So, here's my question to Dr Stanton, Dr Barclay, Professor Brand-Miller, Vice Chancellor Spence and other readers: is it too strong to say that the published false claim of an "inverse relationship" between sugar consumption and obesity - the Australian Paradox! - is an academic and scientific hoax, initially inadvertent but now deliberate via the authors' (ongoing) refusal to correct the public record soon after the serious but obvious errors in data analysis were brought to their attention? Readers, as you all are now aware, the authors either did not notice - or at least did not note - that the Australian Bureau of Statistics dataset on which their preferred "apparent consumption of sugar" series is based had been discontinued as unreliable a decade before Australian Paradox was published! Disturbingly, the authors' own key charts of the valid sugar indicators trend up not down over the relevant timeframe!

Readers, I'm yet to hear any reasonable explanation as to why the Australian Paradox paper has not been corrected or retracted. It's now July, over four months since the invalidity of their conclusion was brought to the authors' attention. The University of Sydney's science departments - home to hundreds of serious scientists - somehow are comfortable with a paper that features a spectacularly false conclusion - "an inverse relationship" between sugar consumption (down) and obesity (up) - and has become a menace to Australian public health? Who out there has enough ticker to join me in arguing for this ham-fisted paper to be corrected or retracted?

David, I went to the Australian Diabetes Council's sugar and diabetes "information sheet" you linked to above. Disturbingly, it refers people to the LOW-GI APPROACH TO NUTRITION without mentioning its FUNDAMENTAL FLAW. Many are aware that the low-GI industry revolves around the claim that low-GI carbohydrates - GI 55 and under - are good for your health while those above GI 55 supposedly are bad. Importantly, it turns out that the “sweet poison” half of table sugar - fructose - has a super-low GI of 19, towards the very bottom of the GI scale. Fructose is super-low GI so it must be a “good" food, right?

And if any processed food product is not low GI, then just add fructose because adding fructose is the recipe for a lower GI reading. Food companies keen to get on board the Low-GI train have an incentive to add fructose, to make processed food lower GI (and less healthy in the process).

"How low on the GI scale would you like your manufactured food product, Sir? 54? 53? 46? 40? Tell me when to stop pouring!" Check out the sweet-as low GIs of high-added-fructose “Coca Cola”, "Milo", “Snickers Bar”, "Ice Cream", “Cake” in a search at http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php .

The fact that fructose has a super-low GI of 19 is a profound flaw in the "GI story". This fundamental flaw is the awkward bit the low-GI industry avoids mentioning like the plague.

Awkwardly, if super-low-GI fructose turns out not to be “just another carbohydrate”, but as harmful as a growing nucleus within the global scientific community believe – that in modern doses it is the single-biggest driver of global obesity and diabetes – the low-GI industry will have been completely wrong on the thing that matters most. (Maybe set up a Google "alert" for fructose and watch it happen?)

Someone unkind might then say that the low-GI school at the University of Sydney had spent decades seeking to identify “good carbs” and “bad carbs”, yet somehow managed not to identify the only profoundly bad carbohydrate – fructose.

In any case, incentives matter, so it must be noted that the low-GI industry has a strong incentive to sound certain that sugar/fructose is not a problem, and to dismiss the idea that modern doses of super-low-GI fructose are a major driver of global obesity, diabetes - "diabesity" - and other self-inflicted “diseases of affluence”.

And that’s what the low-GI industry did – for whatever reasons – when it published its spectacularly wrong but nevertheless high-profile Australian Paradox paper in the incompetently peer-reviewed “journal” Nutrients (see #10 at http://www.australianparadox.com ).

For the low-GI industry, the good news is that the tastiest and most-popular carbohydrate in our food supply – added fructose – also is pretty well the lowest-GI carbohydrate. The bad news is that a growing nucleus of global scientific opinion considers super-low-GI fructose to be the single-biggest driver of the global diabesity epidemic (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all ).

The likelihood that the low-GI industry would tend to contract or collapse if modern doses of super-low-GI fructose/sugar came to be viewed widely by consumers as a major health hazard represents a serious conflict of interest for the high-profile low-GI industry.

At the same time that evidence against super-low-GI fructose has been accumulating, the low-GI industry has been very active in the public debate - and national newspapers - downplaying publicly the extent to which sugar/fructose is a health hazard.

The low-GI industry’s conflict of interest boils down to this:

(i) It matters for the prosperity of the low-GI industry that super-low-GI fructose - mixed into tens of thousands of processed foods - remains widely perceived by consumers as safe to eat.

(ii) Low-GI researchers have been high profile in claiming low-GI fructose is safe in usual modern doses.

(iii) There is growing evidence that modern doses of fructose added to processed foods are a key driver of "diabesity".

In my opinion, the general public should know about (i) and (iii) when interpreting (ii). The Australian Diabetes Council in your link, David, might have given the general public a bigger "heads up" on the key facts on sugar and diabetes if the low-GI industry wasn't writing the ADC's online "information sheet".

Just as it turned out to have been a good idea to be sceptical of the tobacco industry’s assurances that smoking is not a health hazard, the University of Sydney, the media and everyday Australians looking for reliable dietary advice need to be aware that the low-GI industry has a strong - indeed, existential - interest in communicating the claim that added sugar in modern doses is not a problem.

Thus the low-GI industry cannot be treated simply as an objective observer in any debate involving sugar/fructose and health issues. It has a serious yet still undisclosed conflict of interest because – given the ubiquity of super-low-GI fructose in today’s food supply - “Sugar is not the problem” must be the low-GI industry’s “party line”.

David, how's this? I will not mention those two words if you read what I am saying and try to comprehend its significance. For starters, I think you are missing the key point ABW and JBM went out of their way to make. That section under the heading "Fructose was not 'scarce'" - including the statement, "Indeed at certain times in history, consumption of honey may well rivalled [sic] our current consumption of refined sugar" - clearly is designed to suggest that nothing new is going on. In it, they argue that fructose has always been around, it's not been “scarce”; far from it, fructose always has been an important part of humans' food supply. The section is designed to suggest that Aboriginal and other Australians probably are not eating much if any more fructose today than in earlier centuries.

That's their argument: sugar/fructose consumption has declined substantially over the past 30 years and it was pretty high in earlier centuries anyway. And since modern levels of sugar/fructose consumption are not new, they are unlikely to be a key driver of modern maladies like obesity and diabetes. That is their argument, David, and Dr Stanton and I have demonstrated that their argument is wrong.

Dr Stanton has written that sugar consumption (half of it fructose) was something like 2kg per person per annum in the 1700s, and I've said an educated guess for today is maybe 50kg give or take on average (there are no official estimates), and probably much greater for sugar hogs (as I was until recently). One study I've cited above documented that consumption in some remote Aboriginal communities was about 90kg per person per annum. So, David, AWB and JBM do indeed look to be out by a factor of at least 10 in their suggestion that Australians are not eating more fructose today than in earlier centuries and millennia. Compared with modern levels of availability - via commercial sugar farms and sugary food imports - fructose way back when was indeed rather "scarce".

On what the Australian Diabetes Council is saying on sugar, it's message is disturbingly mixed. On one side of its mouth it's saying to eat less sugar (as you note), but on the other side of its mouth it's saying get into it, it's not a problem. ADC's familiar spokesman - Dr Alan Barclay - is on its website reciting familiar false facts: "...in Australia sugar consumption has dropped 23% since 1980. Despite this, during that time cases of overweight or obese people have doubled, whilst diabetes has at least tripled" (http://www.australiandiabetescouncil.com/Media-and-publications/Latest-News/Response-to-toxic-fructose-article-recently-pu-(1).aspx ).

That's the basis for AWB's deeply flawed but published and supposedly peer-reviewed paper - what's its name again? - in which he and JBM claim to document "an inverse relationship" between added sugar and obesity (and so diabetes). AN INVERSE RELATIONSHIP! Eat more sugar and lose weight?

So let's take stock here, David. AWB and JBM were completely wrong on cars not humans eating up to 14kg per person of the "available sugar" via ethanol production, as documented above. AWB and JBM were completely wrong in arguing that fructose was not scarce in earlier times relative to what is in our food supply today. And AWB and JBM were completely wrong in publishing a paper in a science journal that supposedly documents "a consistent and substantial decline in total refined or added sugar by Australians over the past 30 years", and so "an inverse relationship" between sugar consumption and obesity.

Extraordinarily, the authors did not notice - or at least did not note - that the Australian Bureau of Statistics dataset on which their preferred "apparent consumption of sugar" series is based had been discontinued as unreliable a decade before the error-laden paper was published! Yes, it is rather unusual for the ABS to discontinue an important dataset after 60 years!

Of course, the ABS's problem wasn't that it couldn't find any sugar to count. The problem was that sugar imports were coming in so thick and fast embedded in tens of thousands of imported manufactured food items that the Statistician's outdated counting methodologies were overwhelmed. After much deliberation, the ABS gave up counting sugar consumption as a bad joke. So there are no valid data on the authors' preferred series - "apparent consumption of sugar" - after 1998-99 and no reliable data for goodness knows how long before then.

This data dead-end was a trap for analysts unfamiliar with the various datasets documenting Australian sugar production, exports, imports and consumption. And AWB and JBM fell right in, not that they seemed to know until I blew the whistle.

Moreover, their charts that deigned to illustrate valid indicators of sugar consumption show, awkwardly, uptrends not downtrends! Bizarrely, one chart showing a 30% rise in sales of sugary softdrinks per person between 1994 and 2006 is said to be evidence of a decline is sugar consumption!

Please jump in at any time, AWB and JBM - just click "Reply" below - and take us through all that again! Please explain how no correction is required.

David, I advised AWB and JBM in February and March this year that their paper is deeply flawed and so requires correction or retraction (http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/research-causes-stir-over-sugars-role-in-obesity-20120330-1w3e5.html ).

Their unreasonable response so far has been to further stretch credibility by claiming that their paper is fine, because cars not humans have been eating a big chunk of the sugar. And in any case, I wouldn't have a clue because I'm "not a nutritionist" and don't understand nutrition. (Again, that's only half right.)

Unfortunately for AWB and JBM, Dr Stanton of the University of NSW and Professor Boyd Swinburn of Deakin University have confirmed that the conclusion of a 30-year decline in sugar consumption BELIES THE READILY AVAILABLE FACTS.

So I'm arguing far and wide for the factually incorrect paper's correction or retraction by the authors, the journal and/or the University of Sydney, without further unreasonable delay. It simply is unreasonable for scientists to allow a spectacularly false conclusion - the result of inadvertently shoddy data analysis teamed-up with an incompetent peer-review process - to continue to sit in a science journal misinforming scientists and nutritionists across the world via the Internet many months after the real facts have become clear.

Because of the unreasonable delay in correcting the scientific record already, one of the questions I'm now asking is when does an inadvertent series of major errors deliberately left uncorrected become an academic and scientific hoax?

What's your thinking on that David? And do you give me any credit for not using those two words?