Sugar The Bitter Truth

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The following information has been gleaned from a 90 minute video titled Sugar the bitter truth, by Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California.  This is only part of his story.

The Real Truth About Sugar: Dr. Robert Lustig’s “Sugar: The Bitter Truth”

If I told you soft drink is one of the major causes of obesity, how many of you would believe me?  But how can that be?  There’s no fat in soft drink.  Surely we are fat because we eat too much dietary fat.  Isn’t that why we are all eating low fat foods, to cut down on our fat consumption so we don’t get fat?

 

Why do we all try and cut out the fat from your diet?

Because back in 1982 the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and the US Food and Drug Administration made the profound statement that in order to lower our then obesity crisis and prevent cardiovascular disease we must lower our dietary fat consumption rates from 40 to 30%.  Well guess what folks, we did it.  By 1992, the average consumption of dietary fat fell to 30%.  But during that same 10 year period, our rates of obesity related diseases climbed dramatically.

So, if we were able to lower our rates of fat consumption, why have obesity rates continued to soar?

Get Rid Of Sugar and you will get rid of Fat!!!

The answer – sugar and in particular, high fructose corn syrup.

But before I get to that, do you know why we were told to lower our fat consumption rate?  It was because dietary fat leads to cardiovascular disease, remember that.  Still to this day doctors, dieticians, nutritionists all around the world tell to eat less fat, it will cause heart disease.  If that’s the case, how come the Alaskan Eskimos (I’m not talking about the ones that live in Juneau (the capital of Alaska), I’m talking about the ones that still live the ways of their ancestors suffer no cardiovascular disease and eat mainly saturated fat as their food source?  It ain’t the fat people it’s the sugar.

I’m going to dispel this right here right now.  Follow this closely, its pretty heavy.

In the early 1970’s science discovered low density lipo-proteins or as we know them today, LDL’s, the so-called bad cholesterol.  (There’s no such thing as good and bad cholesterol but that’s the topic of another conversation)

By the mid 1970’s it was discovered that dietary fat raised LDL levels and this is true.

By the late 1970’s it was shown that raised LDL levels lead to cardiovascular disease and this again is all true.  Raised LDL levels correlates to cardiovascular disease.

But here’s where science then got it all wrong.

If A (dietary fat) leads to B (raised LDL levels) A          B

And B (raised LDL levels) leads to C (cardiovascular disease) B     C

Then A (raised LDL levels) must lead to C (cardiovascular disease) so therefore if there is no A, then there must be no C, right?

WRONG!!!  (yep the entire medical community followed on blindly based upon false or incorrect logic)   The logic of this argument is based on the transitive being applicable and it isn’t.  Only the contrapositive is transitive.  Wow, what was that?  What the hell does transitive and contrapositive mean?

Let me try and explain that in easier terms.  Transitive is a mathematical term.  Whenever an element a is related to an element b, and b is in turn related to an element c, then a is also related to c.  For example, 1 is less than 2. 2 is less than 3, therefore 1 is less than 3.

Contrapositive is a logical relationship between two statements. For example, take the following (true) proposition: “All birds are animals.” That can be re-said as, “If something is a bird, then it is an animal.”

The contrapositive is, “If something is not an animal, then it is not a bird.”

In the fat reduction example, A leads to B and B leads to C, therefore no A, no C.  that is incorrect.  Only the contrapositve is true.  No C, No A.

Let me tell that this way.  If Alice (A) is the mother of Barbara (B) and Barbara (B) is the mother of Claire (C), then Alice (A) must be the mother of Claire (C) right?  Wrong.  Only the contrapositive is true. Claire (C) is the daughter of Barbara (B).

So for all these years, we’ve been cutting out fat based on wrong logic.  Pretty huge mistake don’t you think???

What’s all this got to do with soft drinks making you fat?  I’m getting there.

If you take out fat from a food source, its flavour is pretty bland, so most food manufacturers these days substitute fat for sugar, in order to add flavour.  For years now, we’ve had a particular type of natural sweetener added to our food supply which is one of the major reasons for our obesity predicament today – high fructose corn syrup.  The producers of this product (HFCS) will argue that it’s exactly the same as sugar and they are correct to a certain degree, but that too is the topic of another conversation.  (One point, glucose measures 100 on the GI Index, HFCS measures 173)

It’s a fact that we as a species are eating more calories than we did 60 years ago.  Teenage boys are consuming 275 calories more than their counterparts did 20 years ago.  So, where are those calories?  5% of those calories are in the form of saturated fat, (see I told you we cut back our fat intake) 41% are in the form of soft drinks and 35% are in the form of fruit juices.

And here’s how they are doing it.

In 1886 Coca Cola was invented and by 1915 sales had reached every soda fountain and ice cream saloon in the USA. (A 4000% increase in 15 years)  The standard serve was in the cute little 6 oz bottle.  (184 grams)

In 1955 Coca Cola manufactured the 10oz bottle (283 grams).

In 1960 the bottle grew to the standard 12 oz can (340 grams).

In 1992 they launched the 20oz bottle (566 grams).

Now you can buy a 44 oz (1247 grams) bucket at the movies.

So, what’s in Coca Cola?

Well firstly there’s caffeine which is a mild stimulant and a diuretic.  (Makes you pee free water)  It also contains salt which makes you drink more because it makes you more thirsty.  Now no-one is going to drink a salty caffeinated solution because its way tool bitter.  So, what else do they add to it, sugar, and in particular, HFCS.  (oh did I mention HFCS is ¼ of the price of sugar?) And not just a small amount either.  There are 10 teaspoons of the stuff in every 12 oz can.  Ya think they don’t know what they are doing?.  They know what they are doing and are laughing all the way to the bank.

They supply a drink that dehydrates you, while making you thirsty and throw in a truck load of sugar that’s making you fat and you have the recipe for disaster.  They gladly wrap it in billions of dollars worth of advertising, pay our top sports people and movie stars huge dollars to promote it and us gullible consumers swallow it (excuse the pun) by the bucket load.  The other day I saw a morbidly obese woman (5 feet 3 inches tall and approx 150 kilos) in the supermarket with 10 x 3 litre bottles of Coca Cola in her shopping trolley.  Oh and 6 loaves of white bread, don’t get me started on bread.

And it’s not just limited to Coca Cola.  It’s the same with all soft drinks nowadays and its getting worse because now all of the drinks our youth consume have guarana another stimulant.

So, what can you do?  It’s simple really, cut back your sugar.  However it’s not that easy given its hidden (yes secretly concealed deliberately too I might add) in virtually every single processed and refined food item in your supermarket today.  Oh here’s what it’s NOT in:  meat, poultry, fish, dairy (its in chocolate milk but not real milk) fruit (I’m not talking about apple juice, I’m mean the real apple) vegetables and nuts just to name a few.  If it comes in a plastic bag, box or carton, chances are its processed or refined and if that’s the case, then we’ve either lowered the fat content, increased the salt content, dramatically added sugar (HFCS) to it or  ALL THREE!!!

Should we have a Fat Tax? Read here