High-sugar diet and disease featured in UC Davis Lake Tahoe Center discussion

Nutrition science researcher Dr. Kimber Stanhope will present a study at Lake Tahoe on July 26 that was recently featured in the CBS News 60 Minutes investigative report with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the metabolic effects of sugar consumption.
The 6 p.m. presentation will be at the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center in Incline Village on the campus of Sierra Nevada College, as part of its monthly lecture series.

People who consume diets high in added sugar have a higher risk of having or developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Early results from an investigation conducted by UC Davis researcher Dr. Kimber Stanhope demonstrated that LDL-cholesterol and other lipids associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease were increased in young, normal weight and overweight men and women who consumed 25 percent of their caloric requirement as beverages sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or with fructose for 2 weeks.

Dr. Stanhope will compare the main dietary sugars—sucrose and high fructose corn syrup—and their component monosaccharides: glucose and fructose. Research evidence that consumption of fructose promotes the development of dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and central obesity will be presented and the main mechanism that accounts for the detrimental effects of fructose compared with glucose will be explained. Dr. Stanhope will discuss the direct experimental evidence that suggests that consumption of high sugar diets is contributing to the U.S. epidemics of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Kimber Stanhope received a M.S. in Nutrition Science and a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biology from the University of California at Davis. She is currently an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of California at Davis. She has over 21 years of nutrition research experience working on more than 150 research projects investigating the regulation of energy homeostasis and carbohydrate/lipid metabolism, and the involvement of endocrine systems in the pathophysiology of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in human subjects, primates, rodents and isolated adipocytes.

The CBS News 60 Minute story will be rerun on August 5, 2012.