WIKIMEDIA, MARLITHMice fed a diet with sugar levels equivalent to what many people in the United States currently consume were more likely to die, controlled less territory, and produced fewer offspring than their healthy-diet counterparts, according to a study out this week (August 13) in Nature Communications.
In humans, diets high in sugar are associated with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but precise causal links and mechanisms have been hard to pin down. Most studies on mice have used sugar levels far higher than that which humans consume, leaving doubts over whether the results really apply to people.
To assess the effects of human-equivalent sugar levels, Wayne Potts of the University of Utah caught and bred wild mice, then fed their offspring a diet in which 25 percent of all calories came from sugar—the maximum “safe” amount, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the level consumed by 13 percent to 25 percent of Americans, according to the authors. The sugar came as a mixture of fructose and glucose, representative of ...
