The advice follows the recent publication of an article in the The Annals of Internal Medicine that argued against warnings of the danger of consuming too much sugar.

According to the New York Times (NYT), the article’s arguments were based on weak evidence and could not be trusted.

MMA president John Chew quoted the NYT article, which mentions Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as saying it ignored hundreds of randomised controlled trials documenting the harms of sugar.

Chew called the article a “manipulation of facts” and said such reviews could be dangerous to those who did not know any better.

“This kind of review could be detrimental to the unlearned reader,” he said.

“This is an industry-funded fight against WHO’s guidelines on sugar. We should be listening to WHO.”

Chew advised those interested in matters of health to read Robert Lustig’s Fat Chance, a book which outlines personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward and stress, as well as societal strategies to improve the health of the next generation.

University of Science Malaysia Centre for Health Sciences dietitian Wan Manan Muda said food-related diseases had multiple causes, but sugar was one of the major risk factors.

“I don’t buy what’s stated in the review,” he said. “I believe it must have been sponsored by the food industry.”

He acknowledged that sugar was not the only health-threatening food, but added that “it’s certainly one of the most prominent, especially when it comes to obesity, diabetes and even heart disease”.