Summary
CBC News, the largest news broadcaster in Canada covers the dangers of eating too much sugar. Gillian Findlay digs into the surprising science and talks to leading scientists to understand that sugar is not only leading to rising obesity rates but also to a host of diseases including cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.
Key Takeaways
All forms of sugars are the same: Whether it is white sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, or high fructose corn syrup, chemically they are all the same.
High consumption of sugar: In Canada, on average a person consumes around 26 teaspoons of sugar per day / 40 kilos in a year. This is much higher than the limit of sugar consumption set by the American Heart Association for men = 9 teaspoons/day & for women = 6 teaspoons/day.
Sugar is also there in food items that are not sweet: Coke to bread, soup, yogurt, condiments, and chicken dinner, all have added sugar (in the Canadian context).
Sugar vs Fat – the real culprit: Over the years the number of cases of obesity, diabetes, & heart diseases didn’t decrease with the decrease in the consumption of fat. The rate of sugar consumption & the rate of rise of the above diseases exactly match the graph.
Effects of sugar on our brain: Excess sugar consumption shuts the part of our brain that tells us when we are full leading to consumption of more food than usual.
Excess sugar gets converted to fat in the liver: The fructose from sugar gets metabolized in the liver. Excess fructose gets converted to fat.
An experiment conducted on a family who are obese: Within 3 weeks of eating food that didn’t have any added sugar decreased their cholesterol, triglycerides, weight & inches around their waist.
Strong sugar lobby did not let any scientific investigation between sugar & various diseases till the 1970s: No study was funded in the 1970s. A British nutritionist, John Yudkin, was the first scientist to research for over 2 decades on sugar & its correlation with increasing rates of obesity, diabetes & heart diseases. In 1972, he wrote a book: "Pure white & deadly”. The book covered how sugar is killing us & what we can do to stop it. A sugar lobby-funded nutritionist, Ancel Keyes, managed to taint Yudkin’s image and prove his work controversial. Keyes wrongly blamed fat rather than sugar to create controversy.
Multiple studies show the ill effects of sugar: Various studies done by different experts prove sugar is poisonous & toxic, and cause of diabetes, cancer, dementia, Alzheimer's, etc
