According to a team of UCSF researchers it should. They maintain, in a new report, that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.
In the Feb. 2 issue of Nature, Robert Lustig MD, Laura Schmidt PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that sugar’s potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.
This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.
Sugar, they argue, is far from just “empty calories” that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver – the least understood of sugar’s damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.
Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome—the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer—are not clinically obese.
“As long as the public thinks that sugar is just ‘empty calories,’ we have no chance in solving this,” said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.
“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig said. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”
Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar,” said Brindis, director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. “Changing these patterns is very complicated”
According to Brindis, effective interventions can’t rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.
The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.
“There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality,” said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) and co-chair of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on alcohol and addiction research.
“In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level,” she said.
The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, UCSF’s National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.
Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.
“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “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.”
See also….Why not put Heroin in our Cornflakes?
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[...] Should Sugar be Controlled Like Alcohol and Tobacco? [...]
What an interesting and funny concept! First of all, even though alcohol and tobacco (and drugs) are so-called “controlled”, teenagers still use them and teens and adults still use/abuse these substances is great quantities. So really, where’s the control? Secondly, there is much $$ to be had from the so-called control (taxes, etc.). And thirdly, you control sugar, well guess what?, they’ll replace it with something MUCH worse: artificial sweetners, which not only do NOT solve the obesity/diabetes/heart disease epidemic, they cause cancer!
Some interesting points raised, but if artificial sweetners where to be banned if they cause cancer, would not natural sweeteners such as Erythritol be a more suitable alternative.
Will that happen?
Unlikely when multinational corporations such as Monsanto are running the show.
What’s the problem?
Here’s a time line of events concerning the company:
In 1965, while working on an ulcer drug, James Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle, accidentally discovers aspartame, a substance that is 180 times sweeter than sugar yet has no calories.
1971 – Neuroscientist Dr. John Olney (whose pioneering work with monosodium glutamate was responsible for having it removed from baby foods) informs Searle that his studies show that aspartic acid (one of the ingredients of aspartame) caused holes in the brains of infant mice. One of Searle’s own researchers confirmed Dr. Olney’s findings in a similar study.
1973 – After spending tens of millions of dollars conducting safety tests, the G.D. Searle Company applies for FDA approval and submits over 100 studies they claim support aspartame’s safety.
1974 – The FDA grants aspartame its first approval for restricted use in dry foods.
1976 – A Turner and Olney petition triggers an FDA investigation of the laboratory practices of aspartame’s manufacturer, G.D. Searle. The investigation finds Searle’s testing procedures shoddy, full of inaccuracies and “manipulated” test data. The investigators report they “had never seen anything as bad as Searle’s testing.”
1976 – The FDA formally requests the U.S. Attorney’s office to begin grand jury proceedings to investigate whether indictments should be filed against Searle for knowingly misrepresenting findings and “concealing material facts and making false statements” in aspartame safety tests. This is the first time in the FDA’s history that they request a criminal investigation of a manufacturer.
1977 – G. D. Searle hires prominent Washington politician Donald Rumsfeld as the new CEO. A former Member of Congress and Secretary of Defense in the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld brings in several of his Washington friends as top management.
1980 – A Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet containing aspartame should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it “has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive.”
1981 – Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan’s transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner.
1981 – In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products. Hayes says that aspartame has been shown to be safe for it’s proposed uses.
1983 – The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame are sold for public consumption.
In 1985, Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet.
In 1995, NutraSweet announced plans to market aspartame tabletop sweeteners throughout Southeast Asia. They also introduced aspartame to India and to test market an aspartame tabletop sweetener in China during that year.
On May 13, 1998, the University of Barcelona produced, in final form, its study clearly showing that aspartame, labeled with a carbon-14 isotope, was transformed into formaldehyde in the bodies of the living specimens, and that when they were examined later, the radioactive-tagged formaldehyde had spread throughout the vital organs of their bodies.
The FDA has established at least 92 medical/health problems have symptoms associated with aspartame and include, but are not limited to–abdominal pain, anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma and asthmatic reactions, bloating, edema (fluid retention), blood sugar control problems (Hypoglycemia or Hyperglycemia), brain cancer (pre-approval studies in animals)
Like the original article postulates it’s about educating folk to these dangers of sugar and providing them with more healthier options.
http://arch1design.com/blog/2009/09/the-green-revolution-one-of-the-most-ecologically-devastating-technologies-of-modern-times/