My YouTube short video for today is:
The transcript is:
For most of my life, tobacco has been public enemy number one when it comes to healthcare. But that is no longer true. It's now public enemy number two, because public enemy number one is sugar.
Sugar is added to every ultra-processed food that our society now produces, and it's added by big business to keep you hooked on food. Literally addicted to overeating.
The consequence is simple to see.
It's obesity. It's diabetes type 2.
It's even dementia, which some medics are now calling diabetes type 3.
Sugar is addictive.
It is destructive.
It's destroying our health service by creating demand that it can't manage.
We need to cut sugar out of food.
Please ask your politicians at this election where they stand on sugar and whether they would change the law about its consumption.
I should add that when discussing health issues like this I am heavily influenced by advice from my wife, who is a partner in this project and a retired GP, and former member of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of General Practioners.
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It’s worth stating where the label “Ultra-Processed Food” originates.
The concept of UPFs was born in the early years of this millennium when a Brazilian scientist called Carlos Monteiro noticed a paradox. People appeared to be buying less sugar, yet obesity and type 2 diabetes were going up.
Ouch.
And the NHS guidance on exercise is well worth stating too in my opinion
Exercise is the miracle cure we’ve always had, but for too long we’ve neglected to take our recommended dose. Our health is now suffering as a consequence. . . .There is substantial evidence that vigorous activity can bring health benefits over and above that of moderate activity.
Good video, asking about personal health should help establish what MPs prioritise.
Thank you
But unless I have some clue who you are – and you opost goves not the slightest evidence – I will be blocking you
Please enlighten yourself. Dr. Robert Lustig’s book, “Metabolical,” is a great place to begin.
Some truth here… my most recent blood pressure test drew favourable comment from my Dr. who nearly fell off his chair when I told him I’d achieved it by picking up a kettlebell or two and taking a stroll round the flats I live in now and then. I suspect a medication-free cure for many current ills is to carry a kettlebell somewhere and then carry it back again, good to keep in mind when access to medications and treatments seem to be fading away.
I have been persuaded to do this……
“A chapter called Sugar should be banned suggests that sooner or later legislation will be needed to prevent people from consuming so much sucrose (this time foreshadowing the UK’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy or “sugar tax”). Yudkin concludes his book with some examples of the ways in which organisations connected with the sugar industry, and with the manufacturers of processed foods that use sugar, sought to interfere with his research or with its publication.”
From Wikipedia about the 1972 book “Pure White and Deadly”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure,_White_and_Deadly
We’ve been being warned about it from at least 1972. Will have to have a re-read of my copy
Thanks
I’m glad the mainstream is finally waking up to the sugar danger – plus the danger of too many simple carbs – like white bread, cakes and biscuits and of some cooking oils (when in doubt use good quality virgin olive oil which has a lot of health benefits). Eating sugar and bad carbs is truly addictive – a demand dialogue is set up between the gut and brain that you can re-set when you change your diet for the better.
When the use of glyphosates in food farming is also highlighted as a danger to health – we’ll be turning a corner. Despite years of petitioning and promised bans the companies that produce these dangerous chemicals keep going strong.
Richard this from the book “Fat Chance” which I read some years ago…..
Sugar. This is the “big kahuna” of the “big lie.” Sugar is not one chemical. It’s two. Glucose is the energy of life. Every cell in every organism on the planet can burn glucose for energy. Glucose is mildly sweet, but not very interesting (think molasses). Fructose is an entirely different animal. Fructose is very sweet, the molecule we seek. Both burn at four calories per gram. If fructose were just like glucose, then sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) would be just like starch. But fructose is not glucose. Because a calorie is not a calorie.
Up until now, scientists have shown that sugar is “associated” or “correlated” with various chronic metabolic diseases. For instance, the increase in sugar consumption over the past 30 years paralleled the increase in obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Areas that drink more soda (e.g., the American Southeast) experience higher prevalence of these diseases. But correlation is not causation.
Which direction do the data go? Does sugar cause obesity and metabolic disease? Or do obese people with metabolic disease drink soda? You can’t tell, because you only have one point in time — the snapshot, not the movie. In the February 27 issue of the journal PLoS One, my colleagues Dr. Sanjay Basu, Paula Yoffe, Nancy Hills and I put this issue to rest, because we now have the movie.[1]
We asked the question, “What in the world’s food supply explains diabetes rates, country-by-country, over the last decade?” We melded databases from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOSTAT), which measures food availability, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), which measures diabetes prevalence, the World Bank World Development Economic Indicators, and the World Health Organization Global Infobase. We assessed total calories; meat (protein); oils (fat); cereals (glucose); pulses, nuts, vegetables, roots, and tubers (fiber); fruit excluding wine (natural sugar); and sugar, sugarcrops, and sweeteners (added sugar). We controlled for poverty, urbanization, aging, and most important, obesity and physical activity.
Bottom line — only changes in sugar availability explained changes in diabetes prevalence worldwide; nothing else mattered.
Total caloric availability was unrelated to diabetes prevalence; for every extra 150 calories per day, diabetes prevalence rose by only 0.1 percent. But if those 150 calories per day happened to be a can of soda, diabetes prevalence rose 11-fold
Precisely
Also worth noting that:
1. Food producers often disguise sugar in their products by using a different name (glucose, fructose, corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, etc)
A longer list can be found here https://www.webmd.com/diet/what-to-know-about-different-types-names-sugar
2. All carbohydrates break down into… sugars (bread, pasta, rice, etc).
This may contribute to the increase in diabetes, which can be treated with a low-carb diet, but which is usually treated with insulin, earning Big Pharm $billions per year. See https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/17/ada-american-diabetes-association-big-pharma
Can’t fix Type 1 diabetes with diet but you can Type 2 which I believe only exists as a consequence of bad diet. I say ‘cure’ but really that’s arguably not the right term, type 2 is probably better regarded as symptomatic of a type of malnutrition than as a disease per se.
Fair comment
As with tobacco, oil and gas, sugar will continue to spread its tentacles and money across politics – and across other industries which benefit – food – pharma etc , while the NHS and the rest of us pick up the tab.
Sugar tax? Tax on production? Legal limits on sugar in food?
None of this will happen until sugar money is banned from buying politics.
I agree the last, most especially
This is a bit behind the times; the bad guys today are reputed to be seed oils, PUFAs, polyunsaturated fats. Take a look at ingredients (easily done on the supermarket sites) and see how almost everything has rapeseed oil in it, for example. More here;
https://www.creationsmagazine.com/2022/01/31/how-processed-seed-oils-have-ushered-in-a-new-age-of-disease-by-joseph-mercola-md/
Sorry – but I am right up with the times
Sure there are problems with some fats so move back to olive oil – – but nothing like the issue with sugar
Richard,
I dont fundamentally disagree but may I add a few other suggestions
Firstly we should include artificial sweeteners etc in sugar controls
Secondly what about alcohol, Caffein and ‘illegal’ drugs. Dealing with the latter will take time but bringing in controls over alcohol such as minimum unit pricing, reducing avalibility, controls over the conditions it is sold under and advertising could be brought in quickly and have amongst other things a significant reduction in demands on the NHS, in particular in A&E – and yes, I dont drink.
Caffein – and yes we are both Coffee fans, has ended up being added to all manner of ‘energy’ drinks which apart from the health issues, when combined with alcohol can have some ‘interesting’ consequences
All points accepted, but sugar is the biggest threat
I agree that added sugar is responsible for the biggest health crisis the world now faces, and is vastly more dangerous than other common additive. However I think it is important to ask, of any additive why it is there, this is especially true of products marketed as “healthy”.
Take a simple example: The soya “milk” from Asda lists the ingredients: water, hulled soya beans, calcium phosphate, flavouring, stabiliser: gellan gum, vitamins: B12, B2 and D2.
Now I make my own soya milk. It only contains soya beans and water. I don’t hull the beans first so it contains much more fibre than the Asda version.
Now to the additives; why are they there? the calcium and vitamins are presumably there to make it a substitute for dairy milk. An argument can be made for doing this.
What about the flavouring and the stabiliser? Incidentally, there is no indication what the flavouring is except that we are assured it is “natural”. I assume the UHT process to which the product is subjected impairs the flavour and this compensates for it. The stabiliser, along with the UHT process itself, is presumably there to extend the shelf life. Using hulled beans probably extends shelf life too. Note that none of this is for my benefit but only benefits the manufacturer. A tetra pack of Asda soya milk will apparently last for a year unopened. Does this mean any more than that it will taste the same after a year as it did when manufactured?
Thanks
“Sugar is added to every ultra-processed food that our society now produces.”
Heinz baked beans.
Here in Belgium there are baked beans with no sugar added – they taste quite differently (and much cheaper than the Heinz variety).
Beans come in a wide variety of forms of which Heinz offers the worst, IMO
I think this is too simple. I also disagree with sugar being enemy number 1.
DOI: I am a GP with a rare form of autoimmune diabetes, sometimes called type 1.5.
I would argue that meat is enemy number 1. The way animals are kept( factory farming) leads to meat with many unexpected contaminants. e.g antibiotics, microplastics and viral particles that may combine and create new types of viruses ( feeding cattle chicken poop is leading to this and atm the USA is having huge problems), hormones, colours, additives to enhamce taste, the list is endless. We eat more meat than at any time in history. We know that people who consume large amounts of meat have increased risk of cancers, heart disease, stroke etc. The death toll associated with this I would suggest is at least as bad as sugar and likely much more. And thats before you factor in the enviromental affects on health, polluted rivers and seas , air pollution (don’t live near a chicken factory for example), carbon dixide and methane and the waste of feeding food that could feed the whole world and then some, to animals so they can then be killed and eaten.
If we are allowed to expand our enemies beyond dietry content, then I would suggest that Covid will be the next enemy. Millions of people with Long Covid, increased risks of heart disease and stroke with every infection (regardless of age and ‘vulnerability’) and lots of research now supporting the on-going brain damage with every extra infection.(one study suggesting that every covid infection takes 3 points off your IQ on average). The wilfull blindness of our leaders in pursuit of ‘growing the economy’ and the ‘othering’ of vulnerable people (we were going to die anyway, better sooner rather than later, it’ll save money) is going to catch up with the health and productivity of our nation very soon.
But that is a long way from sugar, which absolutely does contribute to the addictiveness of processed foods, but really isnt public health enemy number 1.
Noted
Speaking personally, not all diabetics have self-inflicted disease. Like Lise above, I’m officially a Type 2 diabetic (6’2” and 12 st), I have an 81-year old mother who succumbed, unusually, to Type 1 diabetes at age 72. I became unwell at age 47 ad now, at age 60, I have to use insulin. I eat well, we scratch cook, and exercise. So I’m a “Type 1.5” which isn’t much fun but life goes on.
I agree about the sugar problem (although, ironically, I do carry glucose tablets in case of a hypo warning on my phone-based monitor), but what about the masses of empty calories swigged down each year in alcoholic drinks – giving up the booze 20 years ago was so liberating.
Mind you, I recently met a young couple who literally didn’t know how to peel an onion! Like the old Linn Hi-Fi ad “garbage in, garbage out”
Good luck with it
“Does the American Diabetes Association work for patients or companies? A lawsuit dared to ask”, The Guardian, Thu 2 May 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2024/may/02/american-diabetes-association-lawsuit
“The ADA just settled an explosive legal case accusing the organization of betraying people with diabetes”
These links are deeply worrying