Is Sugar Toxic?
(retrieved 5/20/12, posted on www.realfoodhouston.com by Carolyn, 4/4/12)
Dr. Robert Lusting is in the mainstream news right now because of his interview (includes video) by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on 60 Minutes last Sunday. The story is titled “Is Sugar Toxic?” Dr. Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California San Francisco, says that sugar is poison and that fructose (table sugar is half fructose, half glucose) is behind the current obesity epidemic in the U.S. and elsewhere. He is passionate about this subject because he has been treating obese children in his practice for many years and knows that it is not their choice to be fat. He says, “sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”
Dr. Lustig has joined with fellow researchers, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, to propose that sugar has an effect on the body much like alcohol and can be as addictive as morphine or heroine. ”[F]ructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly.” They think that sugar should be taxed and regulated like alcohol.
So is sugar the cause of many of our heath problems? Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories Bad Calories, explains better than I can how important Dr. Lustig’s research and arguments are in an April 13, 2011, article for the New York Times:
The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”
If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.
What can we do? Well, here’s what I’ve done–I’ve reduced my sugar intake drastically in the last few years, explained in my December 2011 post, Could You Give Up Sugar?. I now eat very little sugar, most days no added sugars at all. In another December 2011 post, Sugar Brain Fog, I describe why I knew my previous diet was not good for me and how I made the dietary changes that helped me feel better.
Sources and more information about sugar:
Sugar: The Bitter Truth lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig
The Toxic Truth About Sugar with Robert Lustig, MD
Should sugar be regulated like alcohol and tobacco
UCSF bio of Dr. Lustig
Is sugar toxic? 60 Minutes
Is Sugar Toxic? by Gary Taubes in the New York TImes
Get the facts about high fructose corn syrup
Sugar, Wikipedia
History of sugar, Wikipedia