As world gets hotter, Americans are turning to more sugar, study finds

Washington – Global warming in the United States amplifies the country’s sweet tooth, revealed a new study.

When the temperature increases, the Americans – especially those who have less money and education – drink a lot of drunk drinks and a little more frozen desserts. This represents more than 100 million pounds of added sugar (358 million kilograms) consumed in the country per year, against 15 years earlier, according to a team of researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

When temperatures take place between 54 and 86 degrees (12 and 30 degrees Celsius), the amount of sugar that the American consumes average increases by approximately 0.4 gram per degree fahrenheit (0.7 gram per degree Celsius) per day, depending on the monitoring of researchers of weather conditions and purchases of consumers. At 54 degrees, the amount of sugar added for the average American is just over 2 grams. At 86 degrees, it is more than 15 grams.

Beyond that, appetites decrease and the added sugar falls, according to the study of climate change in the nature on Monday.

“Climate change shapes what you eat and how you eat and it could have a bad effect on your health,” said the study co-author, Chan, climatist at the University of Southampton.

“People tend to adopt sugary drinks as the temperature is increasing and higher,” said Chan. “Obviously, under a warming climate that would make you drink more or absorb more sugar. And that will be a serious health problem.”

The daily difference compared to higher temperatures does not amount to a single candy bar for the average person. But that adds up over time and has a great effect, said Dr. Robert Lustig, professor at the endocrinology of the University of California, Dr. Robert Lustig, specialist in pediatrics and obesity who was not part of the study.

Lustig wrote in an email that among the poorest of the Americans, a single additional box of sweet soft drink per day increases the risk of diabetes by 29% – and the thirst for temperature plays a large role in the epidemic of American obesity.

The average annual temperature of the United States has increased by around 2.2 degrees (1.2 degrees Celsius) since 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

To trace the impact on sugar consumption, the researchers compared it to the recommendations of the American Heart Association: Limiting the daily contribution to 36 grams for men and 25 grams for women.

The team then compared the wind, precipitation and humidity registers to detailed purchase recordings from 40,000 to 60,000 American households from 2004 to 2019, without using data after pandemic success. Then they examined the nutritional information of the items purchased. This allowed them to eliminate other factors to establish a causal link and propose a calculation for the quantity of additional sugar consumed per person per diploma, said the main author Pan He, an environment scientist at the University of Cardiff.

A researcher, he said that she had started to think about the study when she noticed that people in the United States tend to grasp sweet sodas when they are thirsty: “From a nutritional or environmental science point of view, it could be a problem,” she said.

Researchers have found that men consumed more sweet soft drinks and that the amount of sugar added consumed in hot weather was several times higher for low and very low income families than for the richest, the study revealed.

People who work outside drank more sugary drinks than those working inside, and the same thing went for families where the household chief was less educated. Whites have the highest added sugar effect, while Asians have shown no significant change in sugar added in heat.

Lustig said sugary drinks are marketed and at the price in a way to attract the poor, and in many disadvantaged communities, water has the taste of water due to chemicals. The poor are also less likely to have air conditioning and are more likely to work outside and need more hydration, Lustig and he said.

“This should concern us that the rate of the impact is greater in households where people earn less money or are less educated,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, vice-president of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “These groups tend to have a lower basic state of health, it is therefore an area where climate changes seem to amplify existing health inequalities.”

Howard, an emergency doctor, was not part of the study.

The amount of sugar consumed is likely to hover in the future with more warming, Chan said.

But the University of Washington Health and the climate, Kristie Ebi, who was not part of the research, said that temperatures increased with the climate change caused by humans “there will be other importance problems than a small increase in sugary drinks.”

___

The climate and environmental coverage of the Associated Press receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP standards to work with philanthropies, a list of supporters and coverage areas financed at AP.ORG.