Many respected scientists believe that sugar, and the junk foods that contain it, are addictive.
I agree.
Uncontrollable cravings, so strong that we can’t resist, for something that we know is extremely bad for us… that ain’t right!
This is the reason smokers can’t give up smoking, while alcoholics and drug addicts ruin their lives because they just can not quit, no matter what the stakes are.
Sugar addicts can’t quit eating sugar. They may try several times and fail. Slowly, over time, they ruin their health, possibly ending in serious disease like diabetes or heart disease.
It is my opinion that unhealthy food is no better than cigarettes. In fact I think it may be even worse, since people aren’t educated properly about their incredibly harmful effects and addictive potential.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Should Sugar be Regulated?
Sugar consumption can lead to both tolerance and withdrawal, which are the hallmarks of physical addiction.
If we start putting sugar in the same category as substances like alcohol and nicotine, then it’s only natural to wonder whether sugar should be regulated as well.
I mean, it’s addictive. It’s toxic. Many people have no control over their consumption.
The consequences, partly caused by sugar, cost the global society hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
To top it all of, some of the worst products are marketed directly towards kids.
The kids become obese and turn into obese adults. Their metabolism may be permanently damaged and they’re so hooked on sugar that they just can not quit no matter what.
In the end, people may die prematurely. Obese, diabetic, demented, with heart disease.
The executives of the companies that market these products have blood on their hands, children’s blood.
Addiction is a Trap
Addiction is a trap. Kids, who aren’t old enough to exert “personal responsibility”, get hooked on the stuff before they’re old enough to make an informed decision.
Chances are good that they will never recover after they’ve gained more than a few dozen pounds. Some do, but those are the minority. Most people never succeed in losing weight once the damage is done.
It is my opinion that people, and especially kids, should be protected against traps that they will never be able to get out of.
This applies to all addictive substances: nicotine, cannabis, alcohol and also industrialized, hyper-palatable, sugar-laden food.
A Public Health Intervention is Required
This is the last episode in the series with Dr. Lustig, Dr. Epel and Dr. Laria.
This time, they talk about the need for a public health intervention to combat the obesity epidemic (which is a public health disaster). They do make some compelling arguments, such as:
- Obesity is costly to the society, at a 147$ billion dollars per year in health care costs in the U.S. (due to the metabolic syndrome).
- Obesity is a threat to U.S. national security. People aren’t allowed to join the army if they’re too fat.
- We can not control the behaviour of a population. We never could. There is physiology and biochemistry underlying any single behavior.
- Public health measures are objected at first, but later considered a normal part of life.
- In the store, 80% of food is laced with sugar. You can’t go into a poor neighborhood in America and get something that isn’t processed and sugar-laden. If you have no choice, how can it be personal responsibility?
There is no need for sugar in the diet. It has zero nutritional value and it is making us sick, fat and unhealthy.
It is addictive, it is toxic and making drastic actions to minimize or remove it would save lives. Millions of lives.
The video is 8 minutes long:
Sure sugar should be regulated, but how are you going to stop the regulators from regulating saturated fat, beef consumption,whole fat dairy? Until the people who make the rules learn what is good and what is bad for the human body, I would never trust them to get anything right including sugar. Best to approach this from a different angle.
I’m with you Suzie, when they have the ability to tell us what we can and cannot do, they’re bound to get it wrong and cause all sorts of problems.
Yes, obviously that is a problem. They would need scientists that are capable of looking at the science objectively. I’m afraid if they would choose the nutrition community for the task they’d point their finger at saturated fat right away.
This has happened in Denmark. They tax both sugar and saturated fat there.
Sugar shouldn’t be regulated. Neither should alcohol or tobacco or marijuana or cocaine. More harm comes from prohibition of a substance than from the substance itself.
Sugar, if it’s a big part of your diet, is horrible and terrible and can cause all kinds of problems.
Cars kill you when operated incorrectly, but my access to a car shouldn’t be taken away because some other idiot makes bad decisions.
“Sugar shouldn’t be regulated. Neither should alcohol or tobacco or marijuana or cocaine. More harm comes from prohibition of a substance than from the substance itself.”
Can you explain how regulating tobacco and alcohol has caused more harm than good?
Really? Did you miss the prohibition era in the US or are you at all familiar with US history? Hell, what about Mexico? Do you know anything about the history of drug cartels there?
“”Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won,”"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43248071/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/global-war-drugs-has-failed-key-panel-says/#.UBj_HrQ0N_A
There is enough evidence that regulations are the worst when it comes to controlling a substance, and to be honest I am not in the mood to go into a full force history lesson so please, read up on history before you talk about regulations.
There is even conflicting evidence of whether bans are useful as evident by the controversial Rat Park Study.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Forbidding things will only make those things more enticing. Reverse psychology is interestingly strong when it comes to food. I forced myself to drink coke(every time I was thirsty) for a little while and now I drink it rarely(compared to before where I had to have a daily coke, a conditioning of prohibition in youth). Only thing I “suffered” from drinking coke is that varicose veins on my legs disappeared and my sleep schedule normalized. My TSH values improved considerably as well as FT4, and progesterone values went to the healthy normal range. Nothing major, but I was happy with it.
I am reminded by a quote by the biologist Ray Peat who has done more studies on metabolism than most:
“There is a great anti-sugar cult, with even moralistic overtones, equating sugar craving with morphine addiction. Sugar craving is usually caused by the need for sugar, generally caused by hypothyroidism. When yeasts have enough sugar, they just happily make ethanol, but when they don’t have sugar, they can sink filaments into the intestine wall seeking it, and, if the person is very weak, they can even invade the bloodstream and other organs. Milk, cheese, and fruits provide a very good balance of nutrients. Fruits provide a significant amount of protein. Plain sugar is o.k. when the other nutrients are adequate. Roots, shoots, and tubers are, next to the fruits, a good carbohydrate source; potatoes are a source of good protein. Meat as the main protein can provide too much phosphorus in relation to calcium.”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/sugar-issues.shtml
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glucose-sucrose-diabetes.shtml
I agree that sugar is addictive! I don’t know about putting trust in the government to to the right thing. After being off sugar this time 2 months-ish, I have gained some control over it. I am trying to treat it like I have other addictive substances, If I don’t use it, it cannot control me! As soon as I use it, I give it back the control.
I personally don’t think sugar should be regulated because I think if it were, there would just be an even bigger push towards “diet” or “sugar free” products on the manufacturer’s part. A lot of the time these products are worse than the full sugar versions so I think it would cause more harm than good.
Some great points already that I mostly agree with.
The governments and various organizations all around the world have been extremely successful in reducing smoking and smoking-related illness. Massive propaganda, laws and public warnings have been the driving forces behind these developments.
There are a few ideas that I have, that wouldn’t affect anyones freedom or right to make their own choices:
Also, getting the scientific community to back things up instead of continuing the “everything in moderation – eat less, move more” crying game would definitely help things along.
Hmm you have good points but I’d like to share another perspective too. My Grandparents were mexican immigrants with only elementary education (one only went to 4th grade the other 6th grade) the only thing they knew how to do was make bread, they opened up their own business in a small town and thats how they were able to support my mothers and her 3 siblings. If sugar was regulated it’d be much more expensive for them to run a bakery, they might have went into poverty, I mean they were barely making by as it was. Any time a new tax or regulation was implemented it hit the business hard. Yeah sugar regulations might take some fructose off the big corporate businesses but it would also hurt the poor small bakery. And…everyone knows sugar is bad. Its really no secret, everyone knows junk food is bad. Yeah maybe kids don’t know but their parents sure do and if their parents don’t know how to say no to their kids or help their kids then its not the government’s problem. Also the main reason sugar is a huge part of food is due to farmer subsidies on corn which makes corn super cheap. Turn the corn to sugar and sugar becomes a very profitable ingredient to use, if we didn’t have that subsidy corn syrup would be less prevalent in food. This would just hurt business which would hurt the worker (less business less hiring) which would make more poor and unemployed. And the obesity rates are correlated with poverty since they can’t afford fresh foods. I mean look at japan or south korea, they have the lowest obesity rate and their diet is VERY heavily enriched with sugar and carbs. The difference is they eat it with real fresh food. If people are too poor to afford fresh real foods they’ll never get better and they’ll end up stocking on junk food and feeding the same cheap unhealthy companies we were trying to change.
“their parents sure do and if their parents don’t know how to say no to their kids or help their kids then its not the goverments problem.”
Yes, it is the governments problem. Childrens’ rights are supposed to be protected by the government, yet it is legal to market junk food directly towards kids.
Honestly I don’t think regulating sugar would be a game changer in the obesity epidemic, but something has to be done and I’m positive that a government intervention is required. Unfortunately the governments of the world are being educated on diet by biased morons so until that changes then I agree that it is best to leave laws and regulations out of it.
If the same education/propaganda campaigns that went on against smoking would be used to fight unhealthy food, then it would have a major effect over time and save millions of lives.
Hmm, Maybe in this one extreme example I’m lucky my daughter has autism and doesn’t give a flying flip to what is advertised on TV.
Btw, yesterday she ate HALF the romaine lettuce in the fridge. Sneaky girl! What am I going to do with her?!! But it’s my fault, really. She sees what I eat and wants to eat the same things.
Us parents need to be careful what we do (including what we eat and drink) in front of our kids.
“Us parents need to be careful what we do (including what we eat and drink) in front of our kids”
I couldn’t agree more with that statement. I don’t have kids, but as a waitress, I used to just cringe when parents would order a sprite for their toddler. I think how our children are raised and what they see us doing/eating has almost EVERYTHING to do with how our society is today. It’s really up to the people who are having kids right now to make these societal changes. If your kid’s on the soccer team, suggest healthier options than taking the team out to pizza hut after the game… get creative.
Hi Kris.
I agree with you. Sugar is super addictive and I am proof of that. I was brought up in a home where sugar was used with everything, on my cheerios, corn flakes, mashed potatoes and just name it I got sugar with everything even my eggs. So I got hooked at early age. I am still struggling to eat less sugar. And I am making sure that my kids are not getting to much sugar. We have stopped drinking sugary drinks here in my home, if we use sugar we only use raw sugar, agave or stevia. Hard battle, but it is a battle that I believe it is important to take to try to stop using sugar. Change have to come from somewhere.
Kris,
I agree that sugar is just as hazardous as smoking, drinking, etc. Do you think awareness is increasing, though? With all kinds of books, research, etc. on the danger of sugar and the benefits of eating primal, low carb, you would think this is at least beginning to suppress the problem. I at least see some people attempting to eat low carb these days which was probably never the case before.
Alykhan
Yes awareness is definitely increasing, which is great.