Posted on 04/03/2012 8:40:17 PM PDT by chessplayer
Sugar is a “toxin” that is killing the unwitting masses, according to an April 1, “60 Minutes” hosted by CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Gupta and all of the medical experts that he interviewed argued that sugar leads to heart disease, cancer (by leading to the creation of insulin, which cancer cells use to trigger their growth), and that sugar can actually be compared to certain drugs, like “cocaine,” in that it triggers the pleasure centers in the brain.
“New research coming out of some of America’s most respected institutions is starting to find that sugar, the way many people are eating it today, is a toxin,” Gupta said at the start of the segment.
Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD, University of California San Francisco Professor of Pediatrics, was the primary expert in piece. Lustig told Gupta that he believes sugar should be treated the same way as tobacco and alcohol, substances which are still legal, but regulated.
“Ultimately, this is a public health crisis, and when there’s a public health crisis you have to do big things and you have to do them across the board. Tobacco and alcohol are perfect examples … I think that sugar belongs in this exact same wastebasket,” said Lustig.
Wasn’t suggesting taking fructose directly - was saying sugar you get from fruits (by eating fruits such as pears, apples, watermelon, etc..) in moderation is good as opposed to refined sugar.
Wow! This is really a scientific revelation. If you eat sugar, you will die. The quest for eternal life will continue until all that causes death are eliminated.
I hope they never eliminate pop corn. Yea, pop corn and beer.
Then again there was the '30s Chicken Dinner candy bar.
Oh, wait, that was a peanuty treat.
That damned SUGAR!
We consume way too much of the wrong kind thats all. If we went back to using pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup in beverages and food processing that would solve a lot of the sugar issues. Who is artifically keeping sugar prices high in the U.S. so corn syrup is cheaper? Yep our government the same morons who want too try and tell us what we can and can no longer eat.
The New York Times launched a similar op-ed in April of last year entitled “Is Sugar Toxic?” based on a presentation given by Lustig on May 26, 2009.
According to the Times, “His critics argue that what makes [Lustig] compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. ‘It’s not about the calories,’ he says. ‘It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.’” Maybe Dr. Lustig should look more carefully at those shades of gray.
Gupta did make a pit stop at a sugar can farm in Louisiana to talk to Jim Simon, a board member for the Sugar Association. Compared to Lustig’s favorable interview, Simon was badgered and asked loaded questions. (“Would it surprise you that nearly every scientist that we talked to in researching this story, told us that they are eliminating nearly all added sugars…because they’re concerned about the health impacts?”)
“America has been ‘fructosified’ by Big Food,” wrote Dr. Robert H. Lustig, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, the Obesity Task Force, and the steering committee of the International Endocrine Alliance to Combat Obesity. In an Op-Ed titled “Fructose making Americans fatter,” he repeated the claims in the Economist article that fructose is metabolized significantly different from glucose and “average daily fructose consumption has increased by more than 50 percent over the past 30 years.” Another recent article warned parents to be wary of harmless looking juice boxes and what they’re putting into sippy cups to avoid “juices laden with fructose.”
The news has misled parents and a surprising number of nutritionists into fearing “fructose” and believing “natural” sweeteners are healtheir than other added sugars. Even kindergartners who can barely read, have been scared into looking for “bad” HFCS and sweeteners on food labels.
Sugars have not only been studied probably more than any other food ingredient in history and the science is clear, but using “misinformation about sugar is a favorite practice of food quacks,” warned the National Council Against Health Fraud more than fifteen years ago. Nothing’s changed since then. Sadly, even the basics of the nutritional science have never been heard by many of today’s young readers and they’re left more vulnerable than ever to being frightened.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/05/science-of-sweets.html
What is sugar? The Cliff Notes version...
Simple carbohydrates (disaccharides) commonly refer to sucrose, a carbohydrate found in every fruit and vegetable. It’s created in all green plants through photosynthesis and is found in the fruits, seeds, flowers and roots (hence, honey, maple syrup and sorghum). Plants have the unique ability to change starch into sugars, and vice versa. Our table sugar is 99.9% pure sucrose, too, and is made from sugar beets or sugar cane. Sucrose is two simple sugars: glucose and fructose in about a 50-50 ratio. Other simple carbohydrates are lactose in milk products and maltose from malt. Complex carbohydrates (polysaccharides) are the starches from plants.
Regardless of their source, all carbohydrates are broken down to the same simple sugars and metabolized exactly the same by our body. Most are converted in the small intestine, instantly with digestive enzymes, to the simple sugar glucose because it’s the main fuel needed by every cell in our body and by our brain. It’s the true brain food. Fructose is converted to glucose, too (in our liver). Glucose, in turn, uses insulin to move from our bloodstream into our cells, the same no matter where the carbohydrate originated.
Can sugars cause chronic diseases or obesity?
Sugars have been studied up, down and inside out for decades and repeatedly shown to be safe. In the 1970s, the FDA had commissioned the Select Committee on GRAS Substances which found no evidence to implicate sucrose, corn sugar, corn syrup or invert sugar to obesity, heart disease or diabetes. But fears and conspiracy theories abounded among the public, so the FDA commissioned a Sugar Task Force to conduct a comprehensive review of epidemiological, clinical and animal studies on sugars. It specifically examined and rejected hypotheses that sugars play a causal role in “glucose tolerance, diabetes mellitus, lipidemias, cardiovascular diseases (hypertension and atherosclerotic coronary artery disease), behavior, obesity, malabsorption syndromes, food allergies, calciuria-induced renal disease, gallstones, nutrient deficiencies, and carcinogenicity.” The FDA concluded in its 1988 ruling: “Other than the contribution to dental caries, there is no conclusive evidence on sugars that demonstrates a hazard to the general public when sugars are consumed at the levels that are now current and in the manner now practiced.”
A 1997 Joint Report prepared by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization also found no evidence that sugar consumption is a causative factor in any disease, including obesity, diabetes or coronary heart disease. The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, the National Academy of Sciences report Diet and Health, and Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concurred.
Fears of sugars are greatly exaggerated. “Sugar is not inherently a dietary villain,” said David Klurfeld, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Wayne State University, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. “The statistical relationships of sugar intake with the rest of the diet are small and probably not biologically meaningful.” A study in that journal, for instance, found little difference in the quality of diets among those eating more or less sugars.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/05/science-of-sweets.html
True and our food tasted better. Soft drinks tasted better. Canned fruit even tasted like fruit. As much as I can I avoid corn syrup opting for products made with Splenda instead. Still not quite the taste of sugar but much closer to it than corn syrup.
“Dr. Robert H. Lustig, MD, University of California San Francisco Professor of Pediatrics, was the primary expert in piece.”
Somebody needs to remind this individual that opinions are like a-holes - everybody’s got one.
So maybe we should figure out a way to kill off those pleasure centers. Of course, then the 60 minutes staff wouldn't have any need to snort coke any more.
That's an old routine. In 1968 (or around that time) on The Smothers Brothers Show, Pat Paulsen did a comic bit where he said tomotoes are bad. He said in 1830 (or so) some people ate them, and now they're all dead.
tomAtoes not tomotoes
The problem as I see it (as others have stated) is that this is simply another avenue for legislation, taxation, litigation and bureaucratic overhead.
That is one of the aspects rarely discussed about government run health care. Once they do that, they can, by various mechanisms and laws, drill down into other aspects of life beyond immediate health care to attempt to control it via taxation (both individual and corporate) and legislation. Even as I write this, I still cannot believe it, but we have seen enough to know that it will happen.
In his book “Ameritopia” which I just finished reading, Mark Levin states something that made my jaw drop: according to him, the US spends more on legislating, monitoring and enforcing food laws than all monies earned by agriculture in this country.
I don’t have verification that is true, but if it is, it is things like THIS that make it so.
Sanjay Gupta is a liberal, too. He would have no problem enabling the Nanny State to address things like this.
But, he works for the network, so that is redundant.
never mind.
Reading the comments on this thread I would think I was reading an Obama appointed committee report on why we need to institute a tax on the sugar industry and outlaw the manufacture of corn syrup.
Geez. I’m so depressed I feel the need to eat a twinkie and wash it down with chocolate milk before these freepers and Obama form a coalition to outlaw them both.
I thought the problem was related to people using sugar and not brushing their teeth so that allowed enamel destroying bacteria to flourish which caused tooth decay.
Just brush your teeth after a soda or after using sugar and your teeth should be OK.
I have no idea what it does for obesity and diabetes.
In other words, the dose makes the poison, whether it's fructose or sucrose.
How carefully did you choose those scientists, Dr. Gupta?
Good grief, where do you people come up with such nonsense? You want us to believe that honey and fruit are toxic? Just about anything can be toxic if you consume too much of it, however, to believe that fructose is toxic at any dose is just nuts.
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