Nation suckered by sugar into a health crisis

My mother lived by the mantra, “All things in moderation.” However, given the lack of labeling or trickery therein, when it comes to sugar, one will likely be unable to accurately determine for themselves any modicum of moderation.

While grams, portions, per serving/per package are all identified on most packages, what do you make of it? Are you aware of what the ingredients actually are? But isn’t sugar better for you than fat, anyway?

While fat and salt consumption do need to be kept in check, it is sugar, a government subsidized product, that, according to reports from the World Health Organization, The American Heart Association and many more, is at the root of our obesity epidemic.

The article “Sweet Lies: How the Sugar Industry Tricked Us into Worrying About Fat” (http://bit.ly/2dxBPrV) clearly lays out how the sugar industry back in the 1960s partnered with medical researchers to shift the culpability of their product to fat and cholesterol. I remember my dad having to quit eating eggs: We started buying low-fat everything.

The piece goes on to point out that at no time was sugar related to anything other than tooth decay. With the decrease of fats, the door was blasted open for sweeteners to take up the flavor slack needed to prompt folks to buy those instant meals and all. Research dollars spent on fighting heart disease were left askew by the parameters set forth by tainted and outdated data.

When the FDA’s new Nutrition Facts requirements — printed on all packaged foods in the U.S. — go into effect in 2018, the label will include a line for “added sugars”; the American Heart Association recently announced strict intake recommendations for children; and soda tax measures have passed in both Berkeley and Philadelphia, with a number of other cities to vote on their own measures in November. In 2016, it isn’t too hard to find someone who will tell you that sugar is addictive, poisonous, or both. You can bet the sugar industry is fighting this tooth and nail.

In the new movie “Fed Up” (by the producers of “An Inconvenient Truth,” http://bit.ly/1iBiFcZ) it is stated that there are more than 600,000 processed food items in America and 80 percent of them contain added sugar.

By 2050, 1 out of 3 Americans will have diabetes. We are suffering from nonalcoholic liver disease, pancreatic ailments, and the list goes on and on. What are we doing about it, when the sugar lobby has brainwashed us so thoroughly and has us addicted to its products?

And indeed, it is an addiction. As the Heart Association says, we don’t need sugar to live. However, we are hardwired to obtain as much nutrient-dense food as we can acquire (that ol’ lizard brain) and then, most of us, never come anywhere near needing that many calories, so it gets stored as fat in our bodies and in or around our organs. Tons of scientific data demonstrate our brains literally lighting up when given sugar, just as they do for cocaine. And you wonder why it’s so hard to give up.

What does sugar look like? First of all, you’ll find it marked in grams on a box of cereal or what-have-you. One teaspoon is about the equivalent to about 4 grams of sugar. So you may think, no problem. Some of this is sugar from fruit.

There is a huge difference: Fruit has fiber. You cannot possibly consume as many calories from an orange as you can from a glass of juice. There are substantially more calories in that glass of sugar. Juice from concentrate? Worse yet!

Common names for sweeteners (and no, honey, maple syrup, etc. are not immune): corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrates, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, lactose, maltose, malt syrup, raw sugar, sucrose, sugar syrup, cane crystals, cane sugar, crystalline fructose, evaporated cane juice, corn syrup solids, malt syrup, just to name a few.

The World Health Organization and the American Heart Association recommend no more than 9 teaspoons (36 grams) of sugar for men and no more than 6 teaspoons (24 grams) of sugar for women (http://bit.ly/2cxn5o1). Hidden sugars? Try looking to alcohol, processed “health foods” like yogurt, granola bars and “healthy waters” with flavors and sugar.

Are artificial sweeteners any better? The jury is still way, way out on this one. I mean, even though ages old studies implicated aspartame as a cancer-causing agent, you still see it in consumables! Processed chemicals (even though some companies tout their stuff as “natural,” it is heavily processed) have their own problems triggering such symptoms as diarrhea, an increase in weight as consumers consume more of whatever it is, etc.

The bottom line, as we enter this, the season of gluttony: Read your labels, rethink your meals, cook from scratch, use whole fruits as sweeteners, whatever it takes to break out of the sweet lie that’s been spoon-fed to us all these years. The trend in obesity is not necessarily about willpower or even how much we move but by what it is we are consuming.

Awareness about what is going into your body and moderation may do more to save your life than anything else you may do.

A British program about the same epidemic and really worth watching is “The Truth About Sugar,” 2015 (http://bit.ly/1SY4Z0p)

Another eye opener: http://wb.md/2deLTBP.

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 9:18 AM with the headline "Nation suckered by sugar into a health crisis."