{"id":2471,"date":"2012-04-04T15:01:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T20:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/realfoodhouston.com\/?p=2471"},"modified":"2014-07-27T11:08:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-27T16:08:37","slug":"sugar-is-slow-poison-says-dr-robert-lustig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/2012\/04\/04\/sugar-is-slow-poison-says-dr-robert-lustig\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar is Slow Poison, says Dr. Robert Lustig"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sugar<\/a>Dr. Robert Lusting is in the mainstream news right now because of his interview<\/a>\u00a0(includes video) by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on 60 Minutes last Sunday.\u00a0 The story is titled “Is Sugar Toxic?”<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Dr. Lustig,\u00a0Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California San Francisco, says that sugar is poison and that fructose (table sugar is half fructose, half glucose)\u00a0is behind the current obesity epidemic in the U.S. and elsewhere.\u00a0 He is passionate about this subject because he has been treating obese children in his practice for many years\u00a0and knows that it is not their choice to be fat.\u00a0 He says, “sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Lustig has joined with fellow researchers, \u00a0Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, to propose\u00a0that sugar has an effect on the body much like alcohol and can be as addictive as morphine or heroine.\u00a0“[F]ructose can trigger processes that lead to liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases. A little is not a problem, but a lot kills \u2014 slowly.” They think that sugar should be taxed and regulated like alcohol<\/a>.
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Dr. Lustig became known to the public through his lecture, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” The video was posted on YouTube in 2009 and, since then,\u00a0has been viewed\u00a0more than two\u00a0million times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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So is sugar the cause of many of our heath problems?\u00a0 Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories Bad Calories<\/em>, explains better than\u00a0I can\u00a0how important Dr. Lustig’s research and arguments are in an April 13, 2011,\u00a0article<\/a> for the New York Times:<\/p>\n

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig\u2019s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a \u201ctoxin\u201d or a \u201cpoison,\u201d terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely \u201cevil.\u201d And by \u201csugar,\u201d Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal \u2014 technically known as sucrose \u2014 but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig\u2019s help what he calls \u201cthe most demonized additive known to man.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What can we do? Well, here’s what I’ve done–I’ve reduced my sugar intake drastically in the last few years,\u00a0explained in my December 2011 post, Could You Give Up Sugar?<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>I now eat very little sugar, most days no added sugars at all.\u00a0 In another December 2011 post,\u00a0Sugar Brain Fog<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>I describe why I knew my previous diet was not good for me and how I\u00a0made the dietary changes\u00a0that helped me feel better.<\/p>\n

Sources and more information about sugar:<\/em><\/p>\n

Sugar: The Bitter Truth<\/a>\u00a0lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig
\nThe Toxic Truth About Sugar<\/a> with Robert Lustig, MD
\nShould sugar be regulated like alcohol and tobacco<\/a>
\nUCSF bio<\/a> of Dr. Lustig
\nIs sugar toxic?<\/a> 60 Minutes
\nIs Sugar Toxic? by Gary Taubes in the New York TImes<\/a>
\nGet the facts about high fructose corn syrup<\/a>
\nSugar<\/a>, Wikipedia
\nHistory of sugar<\/a>, Wikipedia
\nPhoto credit: Sugar cubes,<\/a> Wikipedia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Robert Lusting is in the mainstream news right now because of his interview\u00a0(includes video) by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on 60 Minutes last Sunday.\u00a0 The story is titled “Is Sugar Toxic?”\u00a0\u00a0Dr. Lustig,\u00a0Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[149,146,80,148,19,145],"tags":[70,147,84,65,151,150,77],"class_list":["post-2471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancer-2","category-fructose","category-health","category-heart-disease-2","category-real-food","category-sugar-2","tag-cancer","tag-fructose-2","tag-health-2","tag-heart-disease","tag-hypertension","tag-obesity","tag-sugar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p70SEj-DR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2501,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions\/2501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfoodhouston.com\/wp-files\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}