From the L.A. Times
SUGAR: The Anti-Sugar Brigade Mounts Up
From an article By Chris Woolston, Special to the Los Angeles Times
April 14, 2012
Worried about trans fat or salt? That’s a little old-school. If you want to stay current on dietary villains, you’ll want to start thinking about sugar.
sugar
Lots and lots of sugar — as in 77 grams, or nearly 20 teaspoons. That’s how much added sugar the average American consumes every day, according to a 2011 scientific report, and that’s not even factoring in the sugars naturally found in fruits, vegetables and milk.
At a time when obesity and Type 2 diabetes have become nationwide epidemics, those piles of added sugar — nearly two times the limit the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends for a 2,000 calorie diet — were bound to get attention.
The anti-sugar brigade features some of the biggest names in nutrition, including Harvard’s Dr. Walter Willett and Yale’s Kelly Brownell. But the de facto leader is Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Francisco. His 2009 lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has snagged more than 2 million views on YouTube so far. He upped the ante in February with an article that called for new taxes on added sugar and age limits for certain sweet treats. To top it off, he declared on an April 1 episode of “60 Minutes” that added sugar was a “toxic” substance that has “created a public health crisis.”
Lustig says that sweets in processed food — whether it’s high-fructose corn syrup in a soda or cane sugar in a candy bar — are the leading cause of metabolic syndrome, a dangerous collection of complications that includes high blood sugar, high blood pressure and decreased sensitivity to insulin. By some estimates, the syndrome more than doubles the risk of heart attack or stroke. And that’s bad news, because about 1 in 4 U.S. adults — including many sugar junkies who look lean and fit — already have the syndrome. “Everyone needs to be aware of the danger,” he says.
Lustig says that fruit juices are a “disaster” and that added sugars should just plain be avoided, even if they come from an otherwise appealing source.
How to cut back? Instead of reading labels and counting grams, Lustig urges people to simply choose more foods that don’t have nutrition labels at all. “I’m not suggesting that we take the sugar out of processed food. I’m suggesting that we eat real food.”
Dr. Wilson comments:
I have to strongly agree with Dr. Lustig on this one. Our waiting rooms are now filled with patients suffering from the toxic effects of excessive fructose from sugar and HFCS. To make matters worse, when you have insulin resistance from eating too much fructose and then consume high glycemic carbohydrates especially from grain, your brain is exposed to toxic magnified glucose spikes.
Because nerve cells don’t need insulin for glucose to enter into the cells, high levels of glucose eventually damage the cells eventually leading to a chronic brain disorder called Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. People with CARB syndrome eventually develop up to 21 brain dysfunction symptoms that can quality them for a long list of common disorders such as depression, PTSD, ADHD, eating disorders, fibromyalgia, bipolar II, anxiety disorders and other conditions.
Because the brain plays a key role in auto-regulating fat stores, people with CARB syndrome lose this ability and start to store extra fat at any caloric intake. Our waiting rooms are now filled with patients who fit this description—brains that don’t work so well and excessive body fat.
So when people try to tell you that sugar isn’t toxic and you can safely consume it in reasonable quantities, don’t believe them. Your brain function and health depends on it.