Sugar Doesn't Prevent Weight Loss

This study isn't about "sugar preventing or not preventing weight loss". It's about different sugars and impact on weight loss. If you wanted to study the effect on sugar on weight loss, you would alter the amount of sugar, not the type of sugar.

High-fructose corn syrup in soda has much more fructose than advertised, study finds
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/26/news/la-heb-too-much-fructose-in-hfcs-soda-20101026

Makes sense...but...BUT...

...was there any mention of number of/intensity of cravings of the test subjects dependent on their different diets?

I've always thought that actual weight loss was a simple CICO thing, but that the composition of our diets likely affects other aspects of our lives like cravings (quantity and quality), hormonal balance, overall health, etc.

(Yeah, I'm too busy/lazy to actually read the studies to figure it out myself.)

As a victim of a sweet tooth, I can attest that the less junk food I eat, the less I crave it. But the anti-sugar crowd often lumps fruit into the evil category. I eat fruit daily, usually at least five servings in a smoothie. That doesn't trigger cravings at all.

I have stopped eating fruit now because of that red mark in the diary, one banana and its alomst over thats before you eat and veg and veg still has sugar in it, there is no no to avoid it imo. The majority of time I still go over my sugar and thats just with healthy foods, then sometimes i think bugger it and eat some divine fudge or some cake. I cant live trying to avoid sugar like its the plague.

Why is everyone always looking for a reason to fuel denial?

The denial that sugar isn't as evil as fear mongerers would lead you to beleive?

Conclusions

Here are the take-home points from this post:

Sugar, including fructose, is not inherently fattening relative to other calorie sources, and unrefined sugar is compatible with fat loss in the context of simple whole food diets.

Sugar can be fattening in certain contexts, specifically if it is added to foods and beverages to increase their palatability, reward value and energy density.

Sugar-sweetened beverages are probably one of the most fattening elements of the modern diet.

Fruit is not fattening, and it may actually be slimming.

In excess, refined sugar can cause body fat to redistribute from the subcutaneous depot (under the skin, where you want it) to the visceral depots and the liver (where you don't want it). It can also cause insulin resistance in the liver and increase blood pressure, all components of the 'metabolic syndrome'. This is caused specifically by the fructose portion of the sugar.

Here are the implications:

Avoiding sugar-sweetened foods, and particularly sugar-sweetened beverages (soda, punch, sweetened coffee, cocktails, maybe fruit juice as well?) can prevent and to some extent reverse fat gain and metabolic dysfunction.

I see no reason to believe that refined and unrefined sugars, used in the same context (e.g. muffins baked with white vs. brown sugar), would have different effects on body fatness. However, unrefined sugars may be less harmful to other aspects of health, because they contain other substances that may be protective. Mark Sisson discussed this idea in a recent post on honey (38).

Eating fruit does not contribute to fat gain in most people, but instead probably favors leanness. Fruit is a whole food with a low energy density and a moderate palatability and reward value.