I have published this video this morning. In it, I argue that sugar is a substance as addictive as tobacco and alcohol and may be much more dangerous now, given the scale of obesity and type 2 diabetes now evident in the UK. The biggest improvement to healthcare and well-being in the UK that Labour could deliver would result from them helping us break our addiction to sugar. So, isn't it time they did just that?
The audio version of this video is here:
The transcript is:
I'm talking about the things that Labour could do that have very little cost that could have a massive impact upon society. There's been a whole list of them, and this is another one. And it's enormously important.
Our modern society is incredibly good at creating addictions. We all know that. Tobacco is one obvious example - a substance created solely to ensure that people get addicted to it so that others make profit.
Alcohol falls pretty much into the same category for many people, and a lot of people are addicted to it.
And people are also addicted to sugar, or fructose in particular, which is a particular form of sugar, the other being glucose, which is not nearly so harmful. And fructose is remarkably close to alcohol in its chemical construction.
Sugar is intensely dangerous. We know that. We know that people are obese. We know that obesity is rising. We know that there has been a massive increase in ultra-processed food. We know as a consequence that we have vastly more people suffering from diabetes type 2 than we have ever had before as a result.
We're also seeing record numbers of people with dementia, and some doctors are now calling dementia type 3 diabetes. And it has the same root cause, they believe, and that is a failure to control sugar within the body.
And this failure is unsurprising. There are vast amounts of sugar in many of the products that we consume.
I checked a Magnum ice cream recently, something that I, well, used to quite enjoy, if I'm completely honest, and discovered, to my horror, that there are six teaspoonfuls of sugar in a single Magnum ice cream. Now that's massive. It is decades since I put sugar in my tea; perhaps even longer since I put it on cereals, which I can remember my mother encouraging. It was a truly staggering revelation to me, therefore, to discover just how much sugar there might be in such a relatively innocuous product. And if you do the same, you'll find it in vast quantities of other products, commercially packaged.
Now I'm not saying we should do without sugar, that would be absurd. I can think of plenty of good reasons why we do need some sugar. Try making a curry without a teaspoon of sugar in there, and you will not get the result that you enjoy, for example. So, of course, it has a role in life. I'm not talking about banning it.
But we do need to control it. And in particular, we need to control people's addiction to it, which is causing all these massively detrimental health effects.
How can we do that? Well, the best way is by communicating the scale of the problem. And I can't think of a better solution than by changing the packaging of products.
We've done it with cigarettes.
We've done it with alcohol.
Cigarettes have massive health warnings on them.
Alcohol in all its forms has labelling about drink awareness, and drink responsibly, and so on.
But we don't have ‘eat responsibly' messages on the packaging of most foodstuffs, or perhaps we should.
And what I think we should have is a little label that shows a teaspoon and how many teaspoons of sugar there are in an average portion of that product at the time that it reaches your mouth. Not at the time it departs the factory, or when you buy it, but actually by the time you are likely to eat it. And that will tell you whether you are consuming too much sugar or not.
You will be able to tot up how much sugar you eat a day, and keep it under control. And the benefits will be enormous.
We would have fewer sick people; we'd have fewer obese people.
We would also have people who are a lot less depressed because there's a relationship between fructose and depression.
We would have people who are able to move more and who are, therefore, fitter.
We would have a more productive society.
And that would increase our GDP, which is one of our government's great goals, which is why I'm surprised they aren't talking about this.
And, of course, we could massively cut the cost of the NHS because it has to pick up the pieces. that big sugar goes out of its way to create. And by pieces, I mean those people who suffer as a consequence of this addiction.
Come on Labour, you could improve our diets. You did it once with salt, now do it with sugar. Make sure that we can control the use of this substance which is so harmful, and let's get on top of it and literally make ourselves better. It's within your possibility to deliver that, so please do.
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I am sure you are aware of Dr Unwin’s amazing work – proof of concept that patient education on low carb (i.e. sugar) diet can save a practice £50,000 a year. Would be interested in your estimates of wider roll out. Numbers in this look low to me https://www.dietdoctor.com/study-shows-low-carb-reverses-diabetes-and-saves-money
I have not done that…
Please put in on you “To Do” list!
That’s uncomfortably long right now
Do what they do in the USA; Find am intern working on their master’s degree who can use the research work they do for you as part of their thesis.
Not that easy here….
Well then, you really need to move to Florida! LOL!
As a public health expert I note that UK sugar consumption per head hasn’t been rising for a long time. Indeed it has been falling since the 1970s based on the links in this article
https://capx.co/dont-buy-the-junk-on-the-sugar-tax/
The rise in reported diabetes is of concern, but we could be looking in the wrong place for the cause.
If you were a public health expert you would know fructose is the problem.
But you are not a public health expert
Hi Richard,
I agree. I think I read somewhere that after tobacco was pronounced unhealthy, the Large US tobacco businesses moved into ready meals and any other sugary products, as they recognised that anything addictive , has a ready market.
It should be treated as you would tobacco, alcohol and salt, with warnings on the packaging where excessive amounts are contained within.
Regards
How about a ‘sugar/sweetener’ duty, rising at RPI plus over the lfe of this government to encourage food manufacturers to cut the sweetness of their products.
Possibly coupled with some sort of reducing cap on the amount of sugar that can be used in the UK?
Added sugar is of course bad, but you continually paint it as the sole evil and the sole cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Actually, obesity is correlated with type 2 diabetes itself. You also attack eating fruit which is preposterous. The research shows eating fruit is good for you. On the other had, there are plenty of things that are bad for us that aren’t sugar. Cholesterol and saturated fat being some of them. Vegans have much lower rates of diabetes.
So wrong
Fructose is the issue. It is in fruit in a big way. Excessive fruit is definitely not good. Even moderate fruit might not be. Fruit juices are the devil’s work
And of course obesity and type 2 diabetes are correlated- they share a cause
Fats are not now seen as a threat. You are many years out of date. The fat propaganda was propagated by big sugar. I wonder why?
Hello Richard while I agree sugar,especially fructose is bad for you I don’t believe you can change people’s behaviour simply by appealing to their better nature. Every addiction be it tobacco or alcohol has required disincentives such as taxes so why not taxes on sugar.
Let’s start with labelling, because that might also indicate the scale of the tax eventually
Excessive blood glucose is readily converted to fructose via the polyol pathway. Fructose – either directly from the diet or via the polyol pathway – can then either be metabolised to provide energy (to be used immediately, or to be stored as fat) or be shunted along a side path where it triggers the turning on of the ‘Survival Switch’ – which is strongly linked to each component of Metabolic Syndrome. Dr Richard J Johnson is a leading authority in this area. Here is a link to one of his more recent papers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10363705/
The key phrase is ‘to be stored as fat’
Hence the rise in obesity, etc
Now that IS a typo. I assume by ‘beauty’ you mean obesity?
Corrected
Autocorrect hits again
“Spill chuckers” are pure concentrated EVIL!
For the doubters, here’s the original fructose research:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831322011073
There is a lot of it now according to my sources – who also checked the video
I am sure you are right that excess sugar consumption is a major contributor to ill health, and a big part of the problem is the way manufacturers include it in foods of all sorts. But I think an accompanying problem is the snacking lifestyle promoted by many of those manufacturers.
Our bodies are adapted to absorbing sugar (and other nutrients) during and following a meal, storing any excess due to the rise in insulin, and then once absorbtion is complete releasing the stored sugar accompanied by a drop in insulin levels. Snacking between meals means there is a constant supply of sugar from food, insulin levels never drop, and the short term stores are never emptied so further excess gets diverted to longer term stores (fat). The constantly high insulin levels eventually mean the body no longer responds to its signal properly, resulting in type 2 diabetes.
As you say the sweetness promotes behaviour whereby the consumer wants to keep eating sweet foods. While it isn’t a chemical addiction quite the same as opioids, it certainly generates an extremely strong habit which is difficult to break. Fructose with its stronger sense of sweetness promotes that behaviour particularly strongly, and evidence is emerging that many artificial sweeteners stimulate the same receptors and neural pathways that promote more eating of sweet foods; they may in themselves be low calory but their consumption tends to encourage over-eating.
But foods are now designed to create craving by suppressing the hormones that suppress the messaging to the brain that a person should be full. That is how snacking is encouraged.
I find it intriguing how some “healthy” snacks are marketed. You see protein bars, that indeed are high protein because they contain nuts, but they also contain lots of other gunk, including lots of sugar.
If you feel you need a high protein snack, why not just eat some nuts? It’s a lot cheaper too!
Agreed
But there are other good choices too, some of them surprising
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jul/25/diabetes-amputations-crisis
There is very little understanding that diabetes is a serious disease.
And that type 2 is curable by diet + exercise – but only walking required.
Add reading ‘Animal, Vegetable, Junk’ authored by Mark Bitman to your long list of things to do. A fabulous read on the calamitous journey towards cash crops.
David Byrne says:
Added or free sugar, in my opinion, is a totally unnecessary part of our diet.
On that basis, Richard, your video is totally valid, and I am sure that it would be largely applauded by Diabetes UK.
In addition, Professor Roy Taylor at Newcastle University would probably support your view.
Your idea of ‘teaspoons on labels’ is simple and it would shock; the 30 g per day sugar recommendation limitation approximates to only 7 teaspoons full.
The imposition of sugar addiction on the population is 100% political, as you suggest. Why not a 100% ban!
Good question…
Seven teaspoon fulls seems rather a lot to me.