Sugar Should Be Regulated As Toxin, Researchers Say
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
Sugar is a nutrient, provided that intake is within acceptable ranges. But most people in the West are eating way too much of it, due to lack of information, lack of will power, etc. When something causes heart disease and diabetes, what do you call it? "Healthy food"? Not at this intake level, no - it's become a toxin.
You should really be careful about your fructose without fibre intake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
At one point, he asks what you call a substance that primarily gets metabolized in the liver and when presented in excess (not an extreme excess either), gets metabolized into products considered harmful to the body.
I should also note that every objection you make is unsupported and ad hominem ('alarmist', 'hack science'). If you want to counter his claim, point to a study where fructose is shown not to be correlated with the diseases in question. There are certainly a lot of studies as far back as the 50s that support his claims. I personally am on the hunt for well-controlled studies with reasonable duration (years to a decade) that involve sugar/fructose.
Fructose in the diet must be metabolized by the liver, which creates excessive amounts of palmitic acid which induces fat to deposit in the liver which causes abnormal insulin response which leads to metabolic syndrome (an umbrella term including diabetes and obesity) which leads to poor personal health which means poor social health which means fructose is toxic.
The science available can support this: fructose in the diet is metabolized by the liver, which at some point of saturation (in animal studies, at outrageous levels of pure fructose intake) causes excessive creation of palmitic acid which is deposited into the liver as a fat. This liver fat is moderately to strongly implicated in abnormal insulin response which can progress to diabetes which is comorbid with obesity.
Thus, actual science is a long long long long way from ~Fructose is Toxic And Must Be Removed From The Foodstream~. There's also the problem of sucrose, which immediately decomposes into… drumroll… fructose and glucose.
Glucose in this story is beyond reproach - it is the foundation of animal life. Which means that the Fructose Is Toxic hypothesis needs to take into account sucrose consumption. Which his argument doesn't.
This guy isn't completely full of shit, and I don't think his heart is in the wrong place. But he's screaming fire in a very crowded theater.
He does not claim obesity is the main disease. It's another sequella of the underlying issue: excessive fructose metabolism.
That doesn't make any sense.
And your ad-hominem is very pitiful.
Alcohol shouldn't be regulated, endangering others while intoxicated and other irresponsible acts should be.
Since sugar is already regulated in that way, I doubt that is what the author's meant, e.g. one must list sugar on the nutrition label of a packaged food, one cannot sell sugar as saccharin, etc.
But it's not like government forced itself into this position on a whim. Society experienced the alternative to government regulation and decided it wasn't sufficient.
Those people are adults, and the numbers of cases is so small that one might question its statistical significance.
Furthermore, what evidence is there that regulation would be a more effective way of dealing with the problem (if it exists) than alternatives such as education or public awareness campaigns?
You clearly miss the point. The fact is that liver disease is increasingly significantly in age groups it was not historically a problem in. This was widely reported in the UK last year, I may not have picked the best article.
In other words, a 32 year old with a beer belly might be more likely to be diagnosed based on a doctor's increased awareness, or may be more likely to be diagnosed because of more frequent visits to the doctor.
And even if those do not play a role, a case has not been made that special regulations with regard to alcohol are a better solution than other alternatives.
I would like a law that lets some people out of both welfare and laws that prevent a person from damaging themselves.
Once a substance impairs your judgement, good luck "regulating" anything that may happen as a consequence. Regulation should intervene before reason flies out the window. Doing otherwise is illogical - just another ivory-tower, human-nature-ignorant, "liberty trumps everything" nonsense.
- Proper regulation(not prohibition) takes money away from organized crime.
- Government based health regulations are still of great social impact.
- The money generated helps pay for the societal impacts of its use.
So does legalization/lack of regulation.
I believe that drunk drivers should not (in the typical case) lose their driving privileges when convicted of driving while intoxicated.
After all, they're not bad drivers (when sober), they're bad drinkers. That is to say they have demonstrated that not only are they unable to behave responsibly after using alcohol, but also that they are unable or unwilling to anticipate and plan for this inability before using.
Instead there should exist the concept of a "drinking license" that can be revoked if an inability to act responsibly with respect to alcohol is demonstrated. (We already have regulations and penalties to keep alcohol out of the hands of certain classes of people in the US, but currently we use an age threshold instead of a more sensible set of criteria -- it's far from airtight but is a decent balance of effectiveness versus intrusiveness).
"Acting responsibly" could include anything from "not committing a crime under the influence" to "not endangering one's health" to "not becoming dependent on welfare".
In principle this could be extended to other recreational drugs, beginning with cannabis and possibly extending to harder drugs.
(This is all basically stolen/borrowed from here: http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/a-serious-drug-...)
Unfortunately some degree of damage to society will happen before it can be demonstrated before a judge that a person is acting irresponsibly, and even what's broadly agreed upon as "responsible use" of recreational drugs would cause some damage to the physical and mental health of some individuals. So some level of "sin tax" is probably still justified.
On the whole, I don't think pressuring the producers is going to get us anywhere. There may be specific cases where such pressure might work -- vegetable soup, perhaps -- but even then, that can only happen if enough consumers refuse to buy products containing gratuitous sugar.
No, I think educating the public is really the only strategy available to us. Even regulation and taxation, which could be beneficial, can't happen without a certain number of informed consumers pushing for it.
Stevia, a low calory, low GI sugar substitute was unavailable in the US until very recently because the sugar companies lobbied the FDA to classify it as a 'drug' or a supplement and needed to be tested ad nauseum before it became available. All this allowed sugar and sweetener companies to prolong the entrance of Stevia into the market and not hit their profits.
In addition to actually getting it classified as a drug, there is paid propaganda research out there saying that it is actually bad for you. Some handwaving arguement is presented without much evidence and a giant leap in order to frighten people.
On such article can be found here. (done by quick Google search and I am in no way partial to this particular one. I am sure that there are more on the same subject) http://www.30thstreetclinic.com/general-reviews/100-stevia-d...
When asked about dangers of stevia, this author says that it is dangerous, because it is not approved by the FDA. Hence, there is this vicious circle that even people who will seek out to educate themselves will come across these claims and perhaps continue to use sugar.
Educating the public against products of the giant companies is an uphill battle. I am Canadian and Canadian doctors and nutritionists chuckle at this "not approved by the FDA - hence bad" arguement about stevia, but I am sure that if we were a major sugar country that it would be the same here as well.
It's a talk by Dr Robert Lustig called Sugar: The bitter truth.
/sarcasm
His reason for regulation is fructose acting very similarly to alcohol as far as reactions go. Be forewarned that video takes about 20-30 minutes to pick up. But he gets into cell biology of what fructose and sucrose do in cells.
Now does anyone have links to criticism that actually argues his points biologically? I can't help but agree that we eat too much sugar in our modern diets.
The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.
It's for the children, of course.
And for your own good, because you, yes you, are clearly irresponsible and can't think for yourself.
Funny ol' world where supposedly smart guys can't think of a better solution for a problem than to ask the government to step in.
I really dislike a nanny state. But I also dislike a state where people don't take care of themselves and then clamor for better healthcare for their preventable diseases and expect the public to pay for it. Not sure what the answer is.
Not sure if government (especially in US) can help here though. US congress recently declared pizza to be a vegetable. Enough said.
Pretty interesting talk about the rise of high fructose corn syrup.
That is false.
Refined sugar (that is, sucrose) is made up of a molecule of the carbohydrate glucose, bonded to a molecule of the carbohydrate fructose — a 50-50 mixture of the two. The fructose, which is almost twice as sweet as glucose, is what distinguishes sugar from other carbohydrate-rich foods like bread or potatoes that break down upon digestion to glucose alone. The more fructose in a substance, the sweeter it will be. High-fructose corn syrup, as it is most commonly consumed, is 55 percent fructose, and the remaining 45 percent is nearly all glucose. It was first marketed in the late 1970s and was created to be indistinguishable from refined sugar when used in soft drinks. Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical. In a 2010 review of the relevant science, Luc Tappy, a researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who is considered by biochemists who study fructose to be the world’s foremost authority on the subject, said there was “not the single hint” that H.F.C.S. was more deleterious than other sources of sugar.
The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.htm...
Substituting the random manufacturer chemical is what should go through safety tests; you shouldn't have to prove it's dangerous, it should have to prove it is safe.
I'm not sure you read this before you copied and pasted it. The sentence I've quoted specifically agrees with jganetsk's claim.
In another similar "regulatory" move, taxes on cigarettes have been shown to be effective for reducing smoking in "new smokers" and young adults (18 - 24) but with almost no effect in other age groups:
http://org.elon.edu/ipe/gallagher.pdf
and
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr4916a1.htm
Would a similar strategy really be effective w/sugar or just add a further tax burden to 95% of us?
Can't we come up with a better system that seeing more money out the door in taxes?
If that research is upheld upon further examination, then any policy which prevents young people from becoming obese in the first place would be perhaps the most promising way to obtain objective progress against societal obesity.
I'm not suggesting that taxes are the right way to go, but if taxes merely discourage the young from developing obesity, that's not a mark against it.
Moreover, if you subtract the energy loss that must take place due to the temperature difference between body and air, the muscle efficiency of such persons must be extremely more efficient.
Surely, evolutionary pressure must have been able to optimize that away?
I find it more likely to believe that people who become overweight tend to be less inclined to be active, and that that does not change when they do lose weight.
Idea was to have a sticker on each and every product, so you wouldn't have to check the back of products for kcal, sugar, fat etc, like so http://i.imgur.com/F8T7P.jpg
I provided this link there too: http://naturalnews.com/Images/Cola-Earlier.jpg
It wasn't so long ago that the cola industry was actively marketing it as something that was beneficial to "put in a bottle".
I imagine that years from now we will look back at our naiveté regarding health with shock and awe.
At one point, they make High Fructose Corn Syrup in their home kitchen - The chemicals involved and the process is mind blowing. It's amazing it's considered "food".
I bet you don't eat that scary irradiated meat, either.
"fructose is a poison, but fruits package it together with its antidote: fiber"
The liver processes fructose quite well as long as it has a chance to do it slowly in small quantities. Fruit is bulky, which limits the amount you can eat in one sitting, and contains a good amount of fiber, which slows down its digestion.
Note that this is less true for modern fruits which are significantly sweeter and easier to eat than the fruits that our ancestors ate due to Mendellian selection.
Sugar - added sugar - is just a tool for creating edible food.
You need fats to aid in the absorption of vitamins and minerals[1], such as using a plain olive oil dressing for your salads.
The point was to show that one cannot simply "add fiber" to a candy bar and make it comparable to fruit. Their individual nutritional values are not correlated because they both have sugar. Nor would they be if fiber was added to the candy.
>You need fats to aid in the absorption of vitamins and minerals[1],
Would this hypothetical diet consist of only snicker's bars? Otherwise I don't understand the argument.
What point are you even trying to make?
And I did not suggest a hypothetical diet of only snicker's bars. Any healthy diet needs a balance of fats, fibers, minerals and vitamins.
Suggesting that all fats should be removed is not accurate. (And I'm simply providing information that you need fats in your diet.)
While I missed your point, apparently you're having your own conversation.
But you'd have to add a lot of fibre. Take a third of a snickers bar. Now add enough fibre and filler to make it the size of an apple. Imagine eating 3 apples as a snack.
"Well, there go our traditions, and culture, and family values," libertarians proclaim. "How dare you infringing on my essential right to throw my sister-in-law on the funeral pyre after my brother dies?"
Makes a lot of sense.
Such a tax will not eliminate sweet foods. Basic uncontroversial economics is sufficient to know the result of such a tax will be that manufacturers will switch to saccharine, Aspartame and other synthesized sweeteners which are not so taxed. Whether their deleterious health effects are real or conspiracy theories and if real are more harmful over the long run than sugar I will leave to the curious reader's further research.
And it is absolutely essential ... regardless of its origin.
But yes, too much ain't a good idea.