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Notes about Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW (Masters in Social Work), MPH (Masters in Public Health). 1) She is an "Associate Professor in Residence", which means that she is non-tenured, nor does she have a permanent teaching or research seat at the university. She is a guest, paid for by someone else. 2) She is at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine. This is a convoluted blend to could be called the "Social Engineering Department." 3) Her organization has recommended using taxation, controlling access to sugary products and tightening licensing requirements to sell sweet snacks and drinks in schools and workplaces. Dr. Laura Schmidt said "We're not talking prohibition. We're not advocating a major imposition of the government into people's lives. We're talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get." As far as Dr. Robert Lustig goes, he has long been a major opponent to sugar, however, he tends to use outdated information from less comprehensive studies. Some of the criticism: "While Lustig correctly points out that the nation’s overall caloric consumption has increased, he proceeds to blame carbohydrates as being the primary constituent... (using) data spanning from 1989-1995 on children aged 2-17... "(However) data from the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), which tracked the percent of total daily calories of the range of food groups from 1970-2007, it appears that the rise in obesity is due in large part to an increase in caloric intake in general, rather than an increase in added sugars in particular." "According to the research, it’s (also) possible that over the last couple of decades, we’ve become more sedentary." "It’s also safe to say that all this finger-pointing at carbohydrate is just as silly as the finger-pointing toward fat in the '80′s. Lustig takes the scapegoating of carbohydrate up a notch by singling out fructose. Perhaps the most passionate point he makes throughout the lecture is that fructose is a poison... The answer is not an absolute yes or no; the evilness of fructose depends completely on dosage and context. A recurrent error in Lustig's lecture is his omission of specifying the dosage and context of his claims."

You've obviously been bought by "Big Sugar."

[Dear God, please don't tell me I need to add a sarcasm tag!]

What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get."

Making "foods that aren't loaded with sugar" easier to get, means exactly that.

Making them "comparatively easier and cheaper to get" means restricting so that those containing sugar are actually harder to obtain.