43: Emily Oster and That Sugar Rationing Study (Bonus!)

Today's conversation is a Rapid Response/Dear Laura/All of the Snacks mash-up (we like to keep you guessing). Lucy and I answer a listener question about Emily Oster's recent take on a study published in Science journal on sugar rationing leading to better metabolic outcomes for kids when they get older. A timely conversation, we thought. We're making this podcast available to all subscribers, but for paying subs, keep an eye out on Thursday for my Dear Laura post, where I delve deeper into the study, Emily's response, and the listener Q. Here's the conversation!

Episode Transcript

Intro

Laura: Hey, and welcome back to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast where we talk about food, bodies and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas. I'm a Registered Nutritionist and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter. 

Every month, for paid subscribers, I record an AMA episode with CIHAS podcast editor Lucy, answering questions from CIHAS listeners. This month we got sent a question from a listener who basically wanted my take on Emily Oster’s take on a study about sugar rationing leading to better metabolic outcomes for kids when they get older. 

And because it feels quite timely, in terms of the general conversation happening right now, we figured we’d pull it out of the subscriber ep and share it with you for free - a kind of Rapid Response/Dear Laura/All of the Snacks mash up. So this one’s on us.

And, for paid subscribers, your Dear Laura post will drop on Thursday. I go into a ton more depth about the history of so-called ‘natural experiments’, we look a little more closely at this study, and Emily’s response. It’s a little less off-the-cuff than this conversation and digs into the nuance of how they reported the stats a bit more. If you’re a paid subscriber then you’ll get that delivered to your inbox. 

And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, then it’s £5/month or £50 for the year. As well of lots of additional perks and access to the wider CIHAS community and archive of posts, you make these free posts possible. Lucy, Jennifer and myself all work on them so your support means a lot and helps us keep the lights on.

Main episode

Lucy: So this question cites a study that I would love you to tell us a bit more about, because it's obviously linked. 

Laura: So, Emily Oster for background, because you're – yeah, Lucy's not in the parenting world, so has not come across this person. So Emily Oster is an economist, I believe, at some Ivy League in the States. But she's also kind of like the parent data guru, so she's written a number of popular parenting books.

And her whole shtick is like, you can solve your parenting dilemmas through data. Which to some extent does make sense, and I know is really helpful for some folks. But she's also kind of…going through some stuff, it seems. 

So whereas, like, her whole thing has always been, especially when it comes to nutrition, like that correlation doesn't equal causation. And she's very careful to like caveat things. And she generally does quite a good job of putting things into perspective. But basically she sent out this newsletter about a study that was published in Science Journal, which is talking about sugar. And the, her whole newsletter was a bit scaremongering about sugar.

So that's the context. 

Lucy: Great. Okay. I appreciate that. So I will read you the question and we will come back to the body of the study. 

Okay, so, this listener says:

“I'd be really interested in your take on the study cited. I'm trying so hard to be relaxed about the sugar in my two year old's diet, despite having friends who brag that their kids didn't touch anything with added sugar until age three and who complain that nursery is feeding their kids too much sugar.

My rule of thumb has essentially been that he can have whatever we're having. He's always been a, quote, “good eater”, who will eat virtually anything, and my number one priority has been to protect his relationship with his body and food long term, and avoid, quote, “contaminating him” with the diet culture BS that I was raised with.

I suppose now I'm left wondering if my efforts to make sure sugar is not a BFD are actually setting him up for poorer health outcomes in later life. I'm fully aware that I fall into the quote “worried well” bracket of parents unnecessarily seeking reassurance, but I consider Emily Oster a pretty reliable source who takes a balanced approach to interpreting research evidence methodically.

I'm not actually sure what quote “a lot” of added sugar or quote “overexposure to sugar” actually is in practical terms, or how to, quote, “not be overly restrictive whilst cutting back where possible”, as she suggests in her conclusion. Also, the casual mention of UPFs/ob*sity and worse metabolic outcomes at the start is also confusing, given that she is usually the queen of emphasising that correlation does not equal causations.

Also apologies for sending this while the world is on fire.”

And that's fine, this is, we're all dealing with that, it's, it's good. Okay, so I'm really grateful for your context, because I think that makes a lot more sense to me now. So it sounds like it's a bit of a like, there's a weird left turn has happened, like somewhere along the lines with, with Emily Oster's content, that's what I'm reading between the lines here.

And her readers are maybe confused. 

Laura: Yeah, Emily Oster's done a 180. 

Lucy: Yeah. Maybe not, or even a, do you think it's a 180, or do you think it's more like a sort 100? 120?

Laura: I think, I think this actually makes perfect sense. To me, this is making a lot of sense. And, interestingly, I haven't listened to it yet, but I saw this morning that Virginia Sole Smith has put out a podcast today that is basically like, what the fuck is going on with Emily Oster? So people are cluing into this, right? 

So here's the thing with Emily Oster…is, and I didn't know this before, and I've actually quoted her in my UPF piece because I spoke to her about the whole correlation/causation thing, you know, we talked about that a little bit because she had done some interesting stuff around UPFs. So I spoke to her on the phone. It was really interesting. But that's an aside.