Is Sugar Toxic? - New York Times/Robert Lustig

Courtesy of Sam Harris, I was directed to a wonderful write-up by Gary Taubes, for the New York Times magazine on the subject of sugar (sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup) and it's impact on our bodies and health. Topics covered range from initial introduction into the market of HFCS as the "healthier" alternative to sucrose, right to a probable, almost unavoidable link to cancer predisposition courtesy of over-consumption of artificial sugars (such as sucrose and HFCS). Though, as Taubes points out, there is no known threshold for tolerance or risk due to currently insufficient levels of research in the field.

This is a nine page write-up, but a very insightful and well written one that I would wholly suggest one read from start to finish. I've not watched a lecture by Lustig yet, one of the main scientists mentioned in the article as being a proponent for the idea of sugars as a toxin, but I do plan to later today and come back to this subject with a bit more in-depth of an opinion. For now though, what I will say is that from what I know within the fitness industry and from talking with many nutritionists and athletes, along with what I understand about human metabolic processes, most of what Taubes and by proxy Lustig are saying seem very probable, and it has certainly piqued my interest in the subject.

As ever though, I'd be delighted to hear some other views on this, since this is one of the more learned forums I'm actively a participant of.

To start things off, below is a brief quote from the article followed by a link to the article proper.

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them...

...In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us...

...It’s one thing to suggest, as most nutritionists will, that a healthful diet includes more fruits and vegetables, and maybe less fat, red meat and salt, or less of everything. It’s entirely different to claim that one particularly cherished aspect of our diet might not just be an unhealthful indulgence but actually be toxic, that when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good, despite all the love that goes with it. Suggesting that sugar might kill us is what zealots do. But Lustig, who has genuine expertise, has accumulated and synthesized a mass of evidence, which he finds compelling enough to convict sugar. His critics consider that evidence insufficient, but there’s no way to know who might be right, or what must be done to find out, without discussing it...

Link to page one.

 

There are well informed, educated zealots too. Sounds like hype over substance.

 

Too much of anything is bad for you. Sugar is no exception. This sort of claim rings alarm bells in me for two reasons. Firstly the media generally separate things into two groups: either they cause cancer, or cure it. Secondly it smacks of something a nutritionist would say (I realise though that Lustig isn't a nutritionist) and over complicates diet for really no reason at all. (Favourite quote on nutritionists "...be very careful because nutritionist isn't a protected term, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. Dietician is the legally protected term. Dietician is like dentist and nutritionist is like toothiologist"

 

could people stop caring for what gives them cancer and actually just try to live healthy?

 

FYI: "Lustig" is German for "funny". Make what you will of that

As for the health problems, if people scoffed less sugar and fat and ate more fruit 'n' veg, 90%+ of them wouldn't have any issues with their diet.

 

*sigh*

As Threefiguremini said, anything taken to excess can be toxic. Including water.

So please, everybody, stop drinking water or anything containing water. It can be very, very bad for you.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill

 

You've missed the point: where do we draw the line of what quantity is safe to consume? While it should be obvious to anybody that excessive quantities of anything are terribly bad for us, we just honestly do not know how much artificial sugar is good for us - or if it is good for us in the first place. What Lustig is saying is that we need more research into the topic, more long-term studies of it's effects, not just a fear-driven campaign to ban it outright before we fully understand it. This is what I agree with.

One major highlighted problem stems from sugar-loaded drinks. When they hit the liver they tend to overwhelm it with fructose, wherein it all gets converted straight into fat, causing issues with insulin production which has a cascading effect on our bodies - weight gain as a direct result, and a quite plausible link to certain kinds of cancer triggered in different ways by insulin, plus insulin resistance, heart disease, and diabetes (type 2). It's not so much that the scientists outlined in this paper are concerned with getting us to stop consuming it, they're just concerned with what fructose does in our bodies, and how we react to it and process it. That's the crux. What the threshold is (if there is a safe one), we just don't know yet. As best as most people that study this field have been able to figure out, those in the west consume more than double what the FDA states is a "safe" level based on their research (40 pounds of "added sugar", as it's called, per year - 200 calories of sugar a day; one can and a half of a popular cola drink).

By no means is all this scaremongering - it's well-founded concern based upon research (though limited currently), observation, and statistical analysis of things like diabetes, obesity, sugar consumption (sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup). Even if we assume the old maxim of "everything in moderation", we just simply don't know what "moderation" is at this point - so people like Lustig are advocating that we err on the side of caution, setting the bar arbitrarily low until we know the facts. Just as we once considered smoking to be a benign act due to lack of research on the topic, much the same can be said of sugar consumption. We now know that no amount of smoking is good - is it possible much the same can be said of artificial sugar one day?

 

I'm sure if the stats were looked into more people probably die from stressing too much about stuff more than they do from what they smoke, drink or eat.

 

I still think that eating a balanced diet and doing some exercise is what really matters. Also I mean how old are people expecting to live? I think this is explained brilliantly by David Mitchell:

 

To your first point: I agree fully, but I don't see the harm in trying to find out if there is a harmonious diet that prolongs life, and allows us to live with fewer ailments during that time. This is but one spoke in a large wheel of research into our biological requirements and processes.

To your second: as long as one can. If I were to die at thirty, so be it, but I'm sure I could find something to do with myself for long after that, couldn't you? If one hundred years in good health were a possibility for me, as it is nice to imagine, I wholly intend to be productive and independent for as long into those one hundred years as I can. Doling out little snippets of life claiming them to be enough for anybody is a rather selfish and narrow way to view ones own life, and I dare say a rather religious view at that; Why worry too much about the here and now when you've got an eternity to worry about after your dead!

I'm rather pragmatic at the best of times, and would fully accept my own demise if it were tomorrow, but even I can see the benefit to prolonging life for as long as one is able to, extreme pain and suffering notwithstanding, and accepting that persistent-vegetative states are not akin to what one would call "life" in the typical human-experience sense of the word.

I want to ask a question then, since you seem persistent that we live just long enough (whatever that means): what is your ideal life expectancy? Did this peak in your mind five hundred years ago at twenty five? Maybe a couple hundred years ago at forty? Is your perfect number what we expect now in most modern western countries: seventy five? Or should we continue to strive to raise this number over one hundred while still improving the quality of life within that century?

 

I think you miss my point (I'm an atheist btw). What I was saying is that human beings have a life expectancy of ~80 years in a developed country such as the UK. Eating some sugar is not really going to influence that a lot either way. (I think if we were to drastically improve life expectancy it would come from medicine by the way not food science)

We all make decision about what we are going to do and when we do we weigh up the enjoyment against the harm it may do us. So I don't smoke because it would probably kill me early (although not necessarily) but I do drink because I'd rather have fun and enjoy a beer despite the damage it does to me. I'd rather enjoy my life and have some sugar than try and eek out another 6 months by living on carrots and celery (yes I'm being a bit facetious here ).

I'm all for research into food technology it's just that I am very wary when someone says "eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day" or "drink 8 glasses of water a day" because it is generally nonsense as in these two examples.

Basically I'm right behind them, I hope some good research comes out of it but at the end of the day people enjoy what's bad for them hence the existence of motorcycles.

 

Part of the problem is we are not aware of how much sugar is in a lot of the foods we eat.

 

Just looked at a 33cl (so 330g) can of Coke earlier today, 35 grams of sugar.

 

To think I used to drink 2 litres or more per day of that stuff... no wonder I'm a lard-arse. Anyway I switched to Pepsi-Max (0g sugar) in January and feel a lot better for it.

 

We know that there's sometimes ******** in the NY times, if sugar was toxic, we would have found out since the 18th century.

 

Additionally, if 90pounds or more per year isn't enough to get people to stop because of the health risks is it really toxic enough to be worried about?

I doubt anyone's stopping researchers from looking into the subject more but the tone smacks of scare-mongering. One sentence portrays sugar as a deadly toxin while the next says more research is needed in the field. If more research is needed then go and get it done before jumping to conclusions, unless the goal really is to throw around words like "poison" in order to scare people.

 

Next up, water is a deadly toxin. Find out the shocking truth in tomorrow's NY Times!

 

Well, then I'm screwed...

 

Here's a nice list of things for you guys.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=269512464297