There is also a Mother Jones piece on the questionable tactics used by the sugar industry to blot out public knowledge of their research ( http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/10/sugar-industry-lies-campaign) .
It is also not simply that sugar is bad for you, a lot of evidence is mounting that a super veg rich diet is the key to good health too http://time.com/45790/eating-more-vegetables-can-almost-halve-your-risk-of-dying/ So you can imagine what high sugar, low veggie diet implies On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 1:52 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > On 19-Apr-11 9:46 AM, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > > > I am posting teh entire long piece below as I think it is an important > > discussion to have - I wanted the opinions of the folks here, some of > > whom have been saying similar things for many years. > > > > Udhay > > > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all > > Another interesting long read, even if the language sometimes is a > little too wide-eyed. > > http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/sugar/cohen-text > > Sugar Love > (A not so sweet story) > By Rich Cohen > > Bottom of the Drink > > They had to go. The Coke machine, the snack machine, the deep fryer. > Hoisted and dragged through the halls and out to the curb, they sat with > other trash beneath gray, forlorn skies behind Kirkpatrick Elementary, > one of a handful of primary schools in Clarksdale, Mississippi. That was > seven years ago, when administrators first recognized the magnitude of > the problem. Clarksdale, a storied delta town that gave us the golden > age of the Delta blues, its cotton fields and flatlands rolling to the > river, its Victorian mansions still beautiful, is at the center of a > colossal American health crisis. High rates of obesity, diabetes, high > blood pressure, heart disease: the legacy, some experts say, of sugar, a > crop that brought the ancestors of most Clarksdale residents to this > hemisphere in chains. "We knew we had to do something," Kirkpatrick > principal SuzAnne Walton told me. > > Walton, Clarksdale born and bred, was leading me through the school, > discussing ways the faculty is trying to help students--baked instead of > fried, fruit instead of candy--most of whom have two meals a day in the > lunchroom. She was wearing scrubs--standard Monday dress for teachers, to > reinforce the school's commitment to health and wellness. The student > body is 91 percent African American, 7 percent white, "and three > Latinos"--the remaining 2 percent. "These kids eat what they're given, > and too often it's the sweetest, cheapest foods: cakes, creams, candy. > It had to change. It was about the students," she explained. > > Take, for example, Nicholas Scurlock, who had recently begun his first > year at Oakhurst Middle School. Nick, just tall enough to ride the > coaster at the bigger amusement parks, had been 135 pounds going into > fifth grade. "He was terrified of gym," Principal Walton told me. "There > was trouble running, trouble breathing--the kid had it all." > > "Of course, I'm not one to judge," Walton added, laughing, slapping her > thighs. "I'm a big woman myself." > > I met Nick in the lunchroom, where he sat beside his mother, Warkeyie > Jones, a striking 38-year-old. Jones told me she had changed her own > eating habits to help herself and to serve as an example for Nick. "I > used to snack on sweets all day, 'cause I sit at a desk, and what else > are you going to do? But I've switched to celery," she told me. "People > say, 'You're doing it 'cause you've got a boyfriend.' And I say, 'No, > I'm doing it 'cause I want to live and be healthy.'" > > Take a cup of water, add sugar to the brim, let it sit for five hours. > When you return, you'll see that the crystals have settled on the bottom > of the glass. Clarksdale, a big town in one of the fattest counties, in > the fattest state, in the fattest industrialized nation in the world, is > the bottom of the American drink, where the sugar settles in the bodies > of kids like Nick Scurlock--the legacy of sweets in the shape of a boy. > > Mosques of Marzipan > In the beginning, on the island of New Guinea, where sugarcane was > domesticated some 10,000 years ago, people picked cane and ate it raw, > chewing a stem until the taste hit their tongue like a starburst. A kind > of elixir, a cure for every ailment, an answer for every mood, sugar > featured prominently in ancient New Guinean myths. In one the first man > makes love to a stalk of cane, yielding the human race. At religious > ceremonies priests sipped sugar water from coconut shells, a beverage > since replaced in sacred ceremonies with cans of Coke. > > Sugar spread slowly from island to island, finally reaching the Asian > mainland around 1000 B.C. By A.D. 500 it was being processed into a > powder in India and used as a medicine for headaches, stomach flutters, > impotence. For years sugar refinement remained a secret science, passed > master to apprentice. By 600 the art had spread to Persia, where rulers > entertained guests with a plethora of sweets. When Arab armies conquered > the region, they carried away the knowledge and love of sugar. It was > like throwing paint at a fan: first here, then there, sugar turning up > wherever Allah was worshipped. "Wherever they went, the Arabs brought > with them sugar, the product and the technology of its production," > writes Sidney Mintz in Sweetness and Power. "Sugar, we are told, > followed the Koran." > > Muslim caliphs made a great show of sugar. Marzipan was the rage, ground > almonds and sugar sculpted into outlandish concoctions that demonstrated > the wealth of the state. A 15th-century writer described an entire > marzipan mosque commissioned by a caliph. Marveled at, prayed in, > devoured by the poor. The Arabs perfected sugar refinement and turned it > into an industry. The work was brutally difficult. The heat of the > fields, the flash of the scythes, the smoke of the boiling rooms, the > crush of the mills. By 1500, with the demand for sugar surging, the work > was considered suitable only for the lowest of laborers. Many of the > field hands were prisoners of war, eastern Europeans captured when > Muslim and Christian armies clashed. > > Perhaps the first Europeans to fall in love with sugar were British and > French crusaders who went east to wrest the Holy Land from the infidel. > They came home full of visions and stories and memories of sugar. As > cane is not at its most productive in temperate climes--it needs > tropical, rain-drenched fields to flourish--the first European market was > built on a trickle of Muslim trade, and the sugar that reached the West > was consumed only by the nobility, so rare it was classified as a spice. > But with the spread of the Ottoman Empire in the 1400s, trade with the > East became more difficult. To the Western elite who had fallen under > sugar's spell there were few options: deal with the small southern > European sugar manufacturers, defeat the Turk, or develop new sources of > sugar. > > In school they call it the age of exploration, the search for > territories and islands that would send Europeans all around the world. > In reality it was, to no small degree, a hunt for fields where sugarcane > would prosper. In 1425 the Portuguese prince known as Henry the > Navigator sent sugarcane to Madeira with an early group of colonists. > The crop soon made its way to other newly discovered Atlantic > islands--the Cape Verde Islands, the Canaries. In 1493, when Columbus set > off on his second voyage to the New World, he too carried cane. Thus > dawned the age of big sugar, of Caribbean islands and slave plantations, > leading, in time, to great smoky refineries on the outskirts of glass > cities, to mass consumption, fat kids, obese parents, and men in XXL > tracksuits trundling along in electric carts. > > Slaves to Sugar > Columbus planted the New World's first sugarcane in Hispaniola, the > site, not coincidentally, of the great slave revolt a few hundred years > later. Within decades mills marked the heights in Jamaica and Cuba, > where rain forest had been cleared and the native population eliminated > by disease or war, or enslaved. The Portuguese created the most > effective model, making Brazil into an early boom colony, with more than > 100,000 slaves churning out tons of sugar. > > As more cane was planted, the price of the product fell. As the price > fell, demand increased. Economists call it a virtuous cycle--not a phrase > you would use if you happened to be on the wrong side of the equation. > In the mid-17th century sugar began to change from a luxury spice, > classed with nutmeg and cardamom, to a staple, first for the middle > class, then for the poor. > > By the 18th century the marriage of sugar and slavery was complete. > Every few years a new island--Puerto Rico, Trinidad--was colonized, > cleared, and planted. When the natives died, the planters replaced them > with African slaves. After the crop was harvested and milled, it was > piled in the holds of ships and carried to London, Amsterdam, Paris, > where it was traded for finished goods, which were brought to the west > coast of Africa and traded for more slaves. The bloody side of this > "triangular trade," during which millions of Africans died, was known as > the Middle Passage. Until the slave trade was banned in Britain in 1807, > more than 11 million Africans were shipped to the New World--more than > half ending up on sugar plantations. According to Trinidadian politician > and historian Eric Williams, "Slavery was not born of racism; rather, > racism was the consequence of slavery." Africans, in other words, were > not enslaved because they were seen as inferior; they were seen as > inferior to justify the enslavement required for the prosperity of the > early sugar trade. > > The original British sugar island was Barbados. Deserted when a British > captain found it on May 14, 1625, the island was soon filled with > grinding mills, plantation houses, and shanties. Tobacco and cotton were > grown in the early years, but cane quickly overtook the island, as it > did wherever it was planted in the Caribbean. Within a century the > fields were depleted, the water table sapped. By then the most ambitious > planters had left Barbados in search of the next island to exploit. By > 1720 Jamaica had captured the sugar crown. > > For an African, life on these islands was hell. Throughout the Caribbean > millions died in the fields and pressing houses or while trying to > escape. Gradually the sin of the trade began to be felt in Europe. > Reformers preached abolition; housewives boycotted slave-grown cane. In > Sugar: A Bittersweet History Elizabeth Abbott quotes Quaker leader > William Fox, who told a crowd that for every pound of sugar, "we may be > considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh." A slave in > Voltaire's Candide, missing both a hand and a leg, explains his > mutilation: "When we work in the sugar mills and we catch our finger in > the millstone, they cut off our hand; when we try to run away, they cut > off a leg; both things have happened to me. It is at this price that you > eat sugar in Europe." > > And yet there was no stopping the boom. Sugar was the oil of its day. > The more you tasted, the more you wanted. In 1700 the average Englishman > consumed 4 pounds a year. In 1800 the common man ate 18 pounds of sugar. > In 1870 that same sweet-toothed bloke was eating 47 pounds annually. Was > he satisfied? Of course not! By 1900 he was up to 100 pounds a year. In > that span of 30 years, world production of cane and beet sugar exploded > from 2.8 million tons a year to 13 million plus. Today the average > American consumes 77 pounds of added sugar annually, or more than 22 > teaspoons of added sugar a day. > > If you go to Barbados today, you can see the legacies of sugar: the > ruined mills, their wooden blades turning in the wind, marking time; the > faded mansions; the roads that rise and fall but never lose sight of the > sea; the hotels where the tourists are filled with jam and rum; and > those few factories where the cane is still heaved into the presses, and > the raw sugar, sticky sweet, is sent down the chutes. Standing in a > refinery, as men in hard hats rushed around me, I read a handwritten > sign: a prayer beseeching the Lord to grant them the wisdom, protection, > and strength to bring in the crop. > > The Culprit > "It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the > first cause, I find my way back to sugar." > > Richard Johnson, a nephrologist at the University of Colorado Denver, > was talking to me in his office in Aurora, Colorado, the Rockies > crowding the horizon. He's a big man with eyes that sparkle when he > talks. "Why is it that one-third of adults [worldwide] have high blood > pressure, when in 1900 only 5 percent had high blood pressure?" he > asked. "Why did 153 million people have diabetes in 1980, and now we're > up to 347 million? Why are more and more Americans obese? Sugar, we > believe, is one of the culprits, if not the major culprit." > > As far back as 1675, when western Europe was experiencing its first > sugar boom, Thomas Willis, a physician and founding member of Britain's > Royal Society, noted that the urine of people afflicted with diabetes > tasted "wonderfully sweet, as if it were imbued with honey or sugar." > Two hundred and fifty years later Haven Emerson at Columbia University > pointed out that a remarkable increase in deaths from diabetes between > 1900 and 1920 corresponded with an increase in sugar consumption. And in > the 1960s the British nutrition expert John Yudkin conducted a series of > experiments on animals and people showing that high amounts of sugar in > the diet led to high levels of fat and insulin in the blood--risk factors > for heart disease and diabetes. But Yudkin's message was drowned out by > a chorus of other scientists blaming the rising rates of obesity and > heart disease instead on cholesterol caused by too much saturated fat in > the diet. > > As a result, fat makes up a smaller portion of the American diet than it > did 20 years ago. Yet the portion of America that is obese has only > grown larger. The primary reason, says Johnson, along with other > experts, is sugar, and in particular fructose. Sucrose, or table sugar, > is composed of equal amounts of glucose and fructose, the latter being > the kind of sugar you find naturally in fruit. It's also what gives > table sugar its yummy sweetness. (High-fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, is > also a mix of fructose and glucose--about 55 percent and 45 percent in > soft drinks. The impact on health of sucrose and HFCS appears to be > similar.) Johnson explained to me that although glucose is metabolized > by cells all through your body, fructose is processed primarily in the > liver. If you eat too much in quickly digested forms like soft drinks > and candy, your liver breaks down the fructose and produces fats called > triglycerides. > > Some of these fats stay in the liver, which over long exposure can turn > fatty and dysfunctional. But a lot of the triglycerides are pushed out > into the blood too. Over time, blood pressure goes up, and tissues > become progressively more resistant to insulin. The pancreas responds by > pouring out more insulin, trying to keep things in check. Eventually a > condition known as metabolic syndrome kicks in, characterized by > obesity, especially around the waist; high blood pressure; and other > metabolic changes that, if not checked, can lead to type 2 diabetes, > with a heightened danger of heart attack thrown in for good measure. As > much as a third of the American adult population could meet the criteria > for metabolic syndrome set by the National Institutes of Health. > > Recently the American Heart Association added its voice to the warnings > against too much added sugar in the diet. But its rationale is that > sugar provides calories with no nutritional benefit. According to > Johnson and his colleagues, this misses the point. Excessive sugar isn't > just empty calories; it's toxic. > > "It has nothing to do with its calories," says endocrinologist Robert > Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco. "Sugar is a > poison by itself when consumed at high doses." > > Johnson summed up the conventional wisdom this way: Americans are fat > because they eat too much and exercise too little. But they eat too much > and exercise too little because they're addicted to sugar, which not > only makes them fatter but, after the initial sugar rush, also saps > their energy, beaching them on the couch. "The reason you're watching TV > is not because TV is so good," he said, "but because you have no energy > to exercise, because you're eating too much sugar." > > The solution? Stop eating so much sugar. When people cut back, many of > the ill effects disappear. The trouble is, in today's world it's > extremely difficult to avoid sugar, which is one reason for the spike in > consumption. Manufacturers use sugar to replace taste in foods bled of > fat so that they seem more healthful, such as fat-free baked goods, > which often contain large quantities of added sugar. > > It's a worst-case scenario: You sicken unto death not by eating foods > you love, but by eating foods you hate--because you don't want to sicken > unto death. > > In the Beginning Was the Fruit > If sugar is so bad for us, why do we crave it? The short answer is that > an injection of sugar into the bloodstream stimulates the same pleasure > centers of the brain that respond to heroin and cocaine. All tasty foods > do this to some extent--that's why they're tasty!--but sugar has a sharply > pronounced effect. In this sense it is literally an addictive drug. > > This raises the question, however, of why our brains would evolve to > respond pleasurably to a potentially toxic compound. The answer, Johnson > told me, lies deep in our simian past, when a craving for fructose would > be just the thing our ancestors needed to survive. > > I paraphrase Johnson in a voice borrowed from the fables, for what are > even the best theories, if not the old stories told again in the > language of science? Some 22 million years ago, so far back it might as > well be the beginning, apes filled the canopy of the African rain > forest. They survived on the fruit of the trees, sweet with natural > sugar, which they ate year-round--a summer without end. > > One day, perhaps five million years later, a cold wind blew through this > Eden. The seas receded, the ice caps expanded. A spit of land emerged > from the tides, a bridge that a few adventurous apes followed out of > Africa. Nomads, wanderers, they settled in the rain forests that > blanketed Eurasia. But the cooling continued, replacing tropical groves > of fruit with deciduous forests, where the leaves flame in autumn, then > die. A time of famine followed. The woods filled with starving apes. "At > some point a mutation occurred in one of those apes," Johnson explained. > It made that ape a wildly efficient processor of fructose. Even small > amounts were stored as fat, a huge survival advantage in months when > winter lay upon the land and food was scarce. > > Then one day that ape, with its mutant gene and healthy craving for > rare, precious fruit sugar, returned to its home in Africa and begot the > apes we see today, including the one that has spread its sugar-loving > progeny across the globe. "The mutation was such a powerful survival > factor that only animals that had it survived," Johnson said, "so today > all apes have that mutation, including humans. It got our ancestors > through the lean years. But when sugar hit the West in a big way, we had > a big problem. Our world is flooded with fructose, but our bodies have > evolved to get by on very, very little of it." > > It's a great irony: The very thing that saved us could kill us in the end. > > The Healthy Chef > Though just 11, Nick Scurlock is a perfect stand-in for the average > American in the age of sugar. Hyperefficient at turning to fat the > fructose the adman and candy clerk pump into his liver at a low, low > price. One hundred thirty-five pounds in fifth grade, in love with the > sweet poison endangering his life. Sitting in the lunchroom, he smiled > and asked, "Why are the good things so bad for you?" > > But this story is less about temptation than about power. At its best, > the school can help kids make better decisions. A few years ago > Pop-Tarts and pizza were served at Kirkpatrick. Now, across the > district, menus have improved. The school has a garden that grows food > for the community, a walking track for students and the public, and a > new playground. > > In a sense the struggle in Clarksdale is just another front in the > continuing battle between the sugar barons and the cane cutters. "It's a > tragedy that hits the poor much harder than it does the rich," Johnson > told me. "If you're wealthy and want to have fun, you go on vacation, > travel to Hawaii, treat yourself to things. But if you're poor and want > to celebrate, you go down to the corner and buy an ice-cream cake." > > When I asked Nick what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, "A > chef." Then he thought a moment, looked at his mom, and corrected > himself. "A healthy chef," he said. > > Rich Cohen's ninth book, on the 1985 Chicago Bears, will appear in > October. Robert Clark's story on the Denisovans was published last month. > > > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > >
