According to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, sugar is in the news, and most of the news isn’t good. The report suggests that sugar may contribute to depression in men. The study tracked the diets and medical conditions of 8,000 people over 22 years (all part of a larger study called the Whitehall Study II) using surveys about diet and doctors’ visits completed every few years. By keeping tabs on what the participants ate and the sorts of conditions they were seeing doctors to treat, the researchers could analyze correlations between diet and health outcomes. The one that popped out is that men who consumed 67 grams or more of sugar per day were 23% more likely to be diagnosed with depression in a five-year period than men who ate 40 grams or less. The connection between sugar and depression appeared relatively quickly during the first five-year survey, and remained more or less steady throughout the study. The same correlation didn’t appear for women in the study, though it’s unclear why. The bottom line is that there’s a sturdy research basis for concern about excess sugar in our diets with respect to mental health, which adds to what we already know about sugar and physical health. Our brains are dependent on sugar to function. That energy is derived from glucose (blood sugar), the brain’s primary fuel. Sugar is not the brain’s enemy-excess sugar is.