Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Dear Friends,

Yes, you have read about sugar before, and we all know how bad it is for our health. But it is all around us, and global habits are tough to change. So read on! And then plug into our Energy Sustain, you’ll find it below in our Clinical Notes. Tune in to this unique product. Lets roll-up our sleeves now and talk about sugar!

It is very clear, the diseases of the world today are chronic degenerative in nature with etiologies that can be distilled down to pollution, pathogens, stress and life style choices. We live in a global world where China’s pollution is our pollution, Africa’s pathogens are our pathogens, and our fast food franchises and big box processed food chains are the world’s health problems. In today’s email I want to talk about one shining factor in processed foods and fast food restaurants that is clearly driving the diseases of obesity, hearts disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and many cancers—added sugar.

America is the fattest nation on earth. Nearly 80 million Americans over 20 are obese, and another 12.5 million children and adolscents are obese (CDC 2012). What makes us Americans so special? Do we have less will power than the rest of the world in terms of our personal management of life style practices, i.e. in the way we eat and exercise? Not at all! In fact the rest of the world is rapidly catching up with us. So, what’s the problem?

The short answer is to watch this video: Sugar: The Bitter Truth. Its presenter is Robert Lustig, MD., a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a crusader against simple sugars being added to our foods. He maintains that they are poisons to our bodies and the prime causes for the pandemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic sydrome and many cancers. They must to be regulated like alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.

The following, for your convenience, is a summary of a few of the points from his talk:

• Dr. Lustig is not talking about the carbohydrates inherant in natural whole foods. They are our source of glucose—the energy of life. The problem is the addition into our highly processed foods and drinks of sugars: sucrose and fructose (with an emphasis on fructose).
• In nature, fructose, sucrose and other simple sugars are mixed in with fibers and when consumed are thereby digested in a modulated fashion. That’s as nature intended it and is good and necessary for our health.
• The problem is with our commercial food industry where they have put added sugar in every processed food one can image. All are laced with sugar.
• Americans now consume 150lb/year per person of sugar. That is one-third of a pound per day.
• The liver gets overloaded with fructose and converts some of it into fat, causing fatty liver and obesity. Some of that fat ends up in the blood stream and helps generate dangerous small density LDLs (VLDLs). These molecules can load within the blood vessel walls and form plaques and are causative with heart attacks.
• Sugar activates the brain like cocaine and people build up a tolerance like they do with drugs and the more you eat the less you feel the reward. The result is you eat more than ever.
• Fructose does not inhibit ghrelin, the hormone from the stomach that says to your brain, I’m hungry. Fructose also doesn’t stimulate leptin the hormone that tells your brain, I’m full. So we binge on sugar.
• Men should consume no more than 150 calories per day of added sugars (remember we are talking about added sugars here not the normal carbohydrates that are natural in whole foods). And women just 100 calories. that is less than the amount that is in one can of soda.
• The answer is to get the added sugar out of our foods.

In summary Dr. Lustig says it is a battle we must all fight. The problem is that what has been good economically for the food industry, adding cheap sugar, is bad for us. There is no middle ground. If one looks at the S&P 500 during these economically stressed times, corporations such as General Mills, Kraft, Proctor and Gamble, Conagra are all doing well. But why? Because food taste good with sugar and it’s cheap, it is that simple. We need to take responsibility for a global change, in our minds first, and then in the way we eat (especially when we go out), and then in the way we teach others about food and sugar. These companies, amongst many others, are the creators of sugar in our foods and the dealers of these foods around the world. 25% of our US exports are in these foods. It is as bad as drug dealing. What to do? A global policy to reduce sugar consumption?
Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

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The Last Quiz Answer:

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On July 17th Annie Leonard and her team at The Story of Stuff Project are coming our with their newest movie (video): The Story of Change. Check out this trainer. The Story of Change urges viewers to put down their credit cards and start exercising their citizen muscles to build a more sustainable, just and fulfilling world..