(
CBS News) It's the sweet spot in our diet -- sugar.
Some of us -- like Valerie Ramirez -- can't go a day without it. She says she's "definitely" addicted to it. But sugar may be more than simply empty calories.
In
the latest issue of the journal "Nature," Dr. Robert Lustig, a
pediatric endocrinologist at the
University of California, brands sugar a
"toxin" -- deadly enough in high enough doses that, he says, it should
be regulated just like alcohol. "Look," he tells CBS News. "Sugar is
pleasure, sugar is energy, sugar is natural. Well guess what? So is
alcohol, and a little is OK, but too much is a bad thing."
The
Department of Agriculture recommends a sugar intake of the equivalent
of about a can of soda a day. But Lustig says
Americans now consume
nearly three times that much, on average.
And it's not
just added sweeteners such as
high fructose corn syrup found in
soft
drinks -- but all
sugars, he says -- even in flavored water -- that are
to blame for diseases like high blood pressure and heart disease --
traditionally blamed on fat. Says Lustig, "It was never the fat. It's
not the fat. It's the sugar."
It's a controversial
statement -- and Lustig certainly has his critics -- not the least of
whom are the sugar and beverage industries which, in lengthy statements,
criticized Lustig's findings.
The Sugar Association
called them "irresponsible," accusing him of "instilling fear" in
consumers. The
American Beverage Association said Lustig's conclusions
are "without scientific merit."
But Lustig is so
convinced, he's saying if sugar isn't regulated, it should at the very
least be taxed, like tobacco. "No one's ready for $2 dollar can of
Coke," he observes. "On the other hand, they weren't ready for an $11.90
pack of cigarettes in New York City, either."
He points to teens like Rochelle Birch -- rushed to the hospital last year after a seizure.
"I was ignoring, basically, what my body was telling me," she says.
She
weighed 250 pounds at just 16 - and Lustig told her in no uncertain
terms her sugar intake was to blame. "You want that soda?" she recalls
Lustig saying. "You're just basically killing yourself."
Birch has lost 75 pounds by
reducing sugar in her diet, something most health experts agree is key.
Where
most depart from Lustig's claims is to blame sugar, and sugar alone,
for a range of diseases they say are far more complicated than that.
Original Link:
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