For how we live.
In a cluster trial across 11 Massachusetts youth clubs, 437 children aged 8–13 got a six-week behaviour programme. The between-group BMI z-score difference was −0.19 and significant; within-group changes were not.
A banana is mostly sugar and starch, but it comes with fibre and potassium, and large cohort studies link whole fruit — bananas included — to slightly lower type 2 diabetes risk, not higher.
Whole fruit and fruit juice behave oppositely for type 2 diabetes risk, and a trial that told newly diagnosed patients to eat less fruit found no benefit at all.
Whole fruit is linked to lower type 2 diabetes risk, sugary drinks to clearly higher risk, and fruit juice sits closer to the drinks than to the fruit it comes from.
Health authorities converge on a ceiling — under 10% of daily calories, and lower is better still. Large cohorts single out sugary drinks as the form most clearly tied to dying earlier.
A meta-analysis of 23 blinded studies found no effect on any of 14 behavioural and cognitive measures. A separate trial fed children extreme doses and found nothing. The belief survives anyway.
Feeding studies find that when fructose replaces other carbohydrate at equal calories, liver fat barely moves. The liver damage tracks the extra energy, not the sugar's molecular identity.