Sugar is making children sick and it’s not just because of the extra pounds it adds to their waists — it’s also due to the way it breaks down in the body, according to a new study. Researchers from University of California San Francisco collaborated with Touro University California to figure out what would happen if they controlled a group of obese children’s diets and cut out all the sugar for nine days. What they found may prove that sugar is toxic to the human body. “This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful not because of its calories or its effects on weight; rather sugar is metabolically harmful because it’s sugar,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Robert Lustig, pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, in a press release. “This study is a solid indication that sugar contributes to metabolic syndrome and is the strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity.” Lustig and his team studied 43 obese children between the ages of 9 and 18. Each child had at least one chronic metabolic disorder like high blood pressure or high levels of blood-fat content. Researchers measured and recorded each child’s blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and glucose tolerance prior to the experiment. Then for nine days, they were given food, snacks, and beverages devoid of added sugar, and kept under constant observation to ensure they followed the diet. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, added sugar is exactly what it sounds like: sugar and syrups added to foods and beverages during production. Fruits and dairy products also contain sugar, but they’re naturally occurring and therefore breakdown inside the body differently than added sugar, which is why the participants were allowed to eat fruit during their restricted diets. The children were also allowed to eat bagels, cereal, and pasta in order to maintain the same number of calories from carbohydrates they were eating before the diet began. Participants were also given “kid food,” like turkey hot dogs, potato chips, and pizza, purchased from local supermarkets in order to make the study more realistic. The only real difference was that their total dietary sugar was cut from 28 percent to 10 percent, and their fructose — mostly consumed in the form of high fructose corn syrup — was cut from 12 to 4 percent.…