Sugar toxic? page

[eglue]

Preaching the choir on this forum, but I thought if it hasn't been noted yet, this is a good article on "conventional wisdom" starting to make the laborious turn to the truth. I thought it could be of use to send to friends and loved ones that give you hell for eating too much saturated fat.

The conclusion to the article is that the writer is saying that sugar may (not might) be the cause of cancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/ma...pagewanted=all

[DFH]

If sugar were discovered today, would it even pass FDA? (Maybe if there was enough payola) It's addictive, causes numerous health problems, mood changes, and changes blood chemistry. It would be banned as a drug.

[Daemonized]

And it rots your teeth. Big pharma would make sure it passed with a quickness.

[js290]

The conclusion to the article is that the writer is saying that sugar may (not might) be the cause of cancer.

FYI, that writer is Gary Taubes.

If sugar were discovered today, would it even pass FDA? (Maybe if there was enough payola) It's addictive, causes numerous health problems, mood changes, and changes blood chemistry. It would be banned as a drug.

John Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly:

...if only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.

[Owly]

If sugar were discovered today, would it even pass FDA? (Maybe if there was enough payola) It's addictive, causes numerous health problems, mood changes, and changes blood chemistry. It would be banned as a drug.

The man at my farmers market who sells gluten- and sugar-free spice blends said almost exactly the same thing on Saturday! I was telling him a bit about the whole paleo eating thing, and he came out with nearly the identical line : )

[Stabby]

The Cause is a little myopic. Before we go on our holy crusade against sugar maybe we should focus on the other things that cause cancer.

What I mean by that is that we don't consume nutrients in a vacuum and our body isn't static. Different nutrients do different things under different circumstances. Too much sugar at one time causes steatosis (fat-build-up) in the liver, but if we have enough choline and methionine, and if our liver isn't inflamed from an imbalance of polyunsaturated fats, excess of omega 6 in the cells, leaky gut, abundance of endotoxins, deficiency of adiponectin, etc etc etc then it may well be that trying a can of soda every day is relatively benign. Yes it will raise triglycerides to consume too much sugar at once, although that also depends upon liver health and other factors. Sugar is demonstrably harmful, but the extent to which it is harmful will probably depend upon other factors. It does some more bad stuff, but those things are dependent upon other things too. Some people just can't tolerate sugar for whatever reason - there is fructose intolerance and people with severely damaged livers. If you are on a very high fat diet like is what we mostly think is healthy, then fructose seems to throw people off a little more than it would with less fat (and people on a high fructose diet say that it is the fat that throws them off, but which is healthier to get most of your calories from?)

I guess what I'm rambling about is that we can't exactly take stats from the general populace and extrapolate them to everyone all of the time. But yeah sugar is a bad food and I don't recommend anyone eating it in significant quantities frequently. It's just maybe possibly not so bad, and it is anything but the sole villain.

[js290]

I guess what I'm rambling about is that we can't exactly take stats from the general populace and extrapolate them to everyone all of the time. But yeah sugar is a bad food and I don't recommend anyone eating it in significant quantities frequently. It's just maybe possibly not so bad, and it is anything but the sole villain.

80/20 here... Moderating to limiting sugar (different for each person) is the 20% effort that can probably get almost 80% of the results. For most poeple (particularly those reading NYT), they'll likely understand sugar bad. Telling them about PUFAs, even in the context of vegetable oils, may just confuse them. Industrialized food that contains sugar will likely contain a lot of PUFAs and flour. So, if they know to avoid or limit sugar, they'll unconsciously limit the other stuff, too.

[Shijin13]

great article. Taubes always knows how to take the scientific jargon and put it into terms the average joe can at least understand when reading...now as to whether "average joe" actually takes a step and attempts to improve his lot in life... well IMO Natural selection : )

[Ayla]

Great article, and Lustig's YouTube video (YouTube - Sugar: The Bitter Truth) was also helpful to me, although there were some major issues (such as still demonizing fat by hammering home the point that "sugar is fat"). After watching the video, I can barely stand to watch my friends drink soda... I have to bite my tongue.

[dragonmamma]

Good reply, Stabby.

There are lots of substances that are toxic if you have a huge dose all at once. Like alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, or even water.

Maybe our livers need to have some toxic substances in order to keep functioning properly, like we need to encounter pathogens to build our immune system.