Friday 25 July 2014

A spoon-full of sugar helps each mouthful go down!


The latest from Robert Lustig on the fight against dietary sugar.


Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/23/6574928_viewpoints-dont-believe-industry.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/23/6574928_viewpoints-dont-believe-industry.html

There is whole lot of money being spent on persuading us that sugar is harmless. It is incredible to think that some people are employed solely to write reports to make sugar look respectable.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"

Things are little different in this country, every manufacturer of food with added sugar (that includes just about all processed food) argues that their food has it's place in a "healthy balanced diet" - even Coca Cola!. When you combine this with the ubiquitous phrase "everything in moderation", you will get a big pile of sugar on our places every day.

They can't all be right, can they? Not when the World Health Organisation are recommending a maximum of 6 teaspoons of sugar per day. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10677712/World-Health-Organisation-advises-halving-sugar-intake.html

However Action on Sugar is gaining ground (they want to persuade industry to gradually lower the unnecessary sugar content in processed foods), and the new guidelines for school food and drink are also good to see  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27869411).

But I wait to see whether our local school will actually remove any more of the wide array of sugary drinks from the counter and start promoting water as the drink of choice. After a minor improvement 2 months back they have stopped replying to my emails since this change was announced; they have until January to change or I will be after them.

So things are starting to change. The biggest danger I see ahead is with the attitudes of parents. So many people argue that they should be allowed to choose for themselves if they want to drink a 2 liter bottle of cheap cola every day; they don't want to be nannied by me or the state.

The trouble is the nation is getting fatter and the Nanny Health Service is getting poorer; and these same people appear to expect nanny to be there to tuck them in and cure them when they need drugs or a gastric band. They cant have it both ways!






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