Lets Wage War

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Last night on “A Current Affair” (I know I promised not to watch such tripe TV) they ran the repeating story about the evils of sugar.  It was poorly edited to be biased so let’s not get into an argument about ACA.

Those of you who follow my ramblings will know I am a huge proponent against sugar in ALL of its forms (EXCEPT FRUIT).  I’ve written about the science behind the evils of sugar already so I’m not going to repeat myself.  If you haven’t read them check them out here. Be warned, they are quite long so I had to break it down into 3 parts.  Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 .  Olivia and I have even made a video highlighting the sheer quantity of the poisonous stuff in some favorite drinks.  You can check it out by clicking here.

On one side of this argument, you’ve got Dr Robert Lustig, an American Paediatric Endocrinologist whose has spent a large portion of his working life working with obese children.  Joining him you have an Australian Lawyer who lost 40 kgs by simply cutting sugar from his diet, David Gillespie, author of bestselling books, Sweet Poison and others, as well as numerous fitness industry personnel (myself included) who have had similar successes either to themselves or with the people they work with.

On the other side of the argument you have the Beverage Association, whose sole existence in this world is provide a loud and strong voice to the companies that sell beverages heavily reliant on the exact same substance that is alleged be poisonous.  Joining them are most dieticians and nutritionists whose methology relies on the fundamentally flawed concept that our obesity epidemic is as a result of people eating too many calories and then not exercising enough to burn those same calories off.

If you eat sugar and you do NOT believe it is bad for you, I hereby challenge you to abstain from it for a month.  I bet you can’t and the reason is clear, it’s because it’s addictive.

40 years ago, we waged a war against the tobacco industry because of the dangers of smoking.  Through a gradual process, smoking has been eliminated from restaurants, licensed premises, government buildings, public playgrounds and almost all work places.  It is illegal to sell cigarettes to people under 18.  It is illegal for tobacco companies to advertise their products at sport venues.  It is illegal for venues that sell cigarettes to have them visible to the public and now with the recent introduction of plain paper packaging laws it is now illegal to sell cigarettes with any sort of tobacco company branding on them.

Oh and if you didn’t know, smoking is harmful to your health because it says so in the warning labels that MUST be on the packets.

My 2013 resolution (one of many) has been to wage a war, a war against any industry that sells products heavily laden in sugar.  That includes beverages and fast foods. Why?  Because as far as I’m concerned cigarettes and sugar are exactly the same, poison!!!  It took us 40 years to get the tobacco industry to where it is today and look how mighty and powerful they are.

I’ve said this before (on national television by the way) and I’ll say it again, if we can do to the fast food industry what we’ve done to the cigarette industry then we’ll go a long way to solving our obesity epidemic.