Is Sugar Toxic? 1017
a_hanso tips an article by Gary Taubes in the NYTimes Magazine that evaluates claims from Dr. Robert Lustig's virally popular lecture on the negative effects of sugar on peoples' health. (YouTube video of the lecture.) Taubes discusses the science behind the claims and the odd willingness of people to accept Lustig's arguments without further inspection. Quoting:
"When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment 'surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,' not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us. This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?"
Re:To paraphrase ButtHead (Score:2, Insightful)
Sugar's not really food. It's a drug. The first drug of addiction for most people on the planet.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, tell me you have a source for that statement.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:3, Insightful)
Calling sugar "toxic" is probably a plot to demean the word "toxic" and make tobacco less regulated.
+1 tinfoil hat award.
Nice.
Re:To paraphrase ButtHead (Score:4, Insightful)
protip: People are inherently addicted to stuff that their body can break down into ATP. This includes fats and sugars (including sucrose and high fructose corn syrup). We call that stuff "food".
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
He's only really calling fructose toxic, and only when it isn't ingested with enough fiber to blunt its absorption. (So an orange is fine, but pulp-free orange juice will slowly kill you.)
In fact, I suspect the drinking of pulp-free orange juice over a span of 80-90 years is responsible for the near 100% mortality over that time span.
Ask a diabetic (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost all that we eat is converted to sugar by our own bodies. Protein is the exception. The catch is that carmelization occurs and this end product clogs our internal organs. It is one reason why older peoples eyes don't look as clear as when they were young. So yes sugar does help to kill you and there is nothing at all that you can do about it other than a mild state of starvation all your life. Prevention may extend life but it ruins the quality of life to such a degree that one almost must be perverted to maintain that degree of hunger.
Whet we are seeing are people looking for a way to get attention and make money simply by spouting nonsense. Think about the extent of this phony evangelism. How many people have made money, one way or another, by selling diets and diet products? And every one of those diets and diet products was hot air with a liberal dose of lies melted in to the alloy. Yet simply lying and stealing money with false health claims is not enough to be put in prison these days. And the suckers keep right on lining up to lose their money. Whether it's the daily miracle cure for arthritis or the miracle weight loss method it is all nonsense.
Re:Organic vs processed (toxic) sugar. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Glucose anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
RTFA isn't your strong suit, is it?
Sugar is a (roughly) 50/50 mix of glucose and fructose, and it's the fructose that Lustig claims is toxic.
Re:Curious... (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, armchair nerd pundits like us have no place to try to debunk such claims
I'll admit, I'm too lazy to watch a presentation. However:
“It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”
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.
Yeah, no. Sorry - obesity is about the calories. You know why it's skyrocketed? Because we've become a nation of office whores, sitting behind a desk all day while still eating 2k+ calories to support an active lifestyle that we don't live.
Calories in > calories out == fat bastards.
It is that simple.
Re:It's complete bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Organic vs processed (toxic) sugar. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To paraphrase ButtHead (Score:4, Insightful)
People are addicted to food. The withdrawal symptoms are worse than for any other drug.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's complete bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
...which still doesn't alter the fact that you have to EAT IT before it's added to that BIG FAT GUT of yours.
The nature of your metabolism only addresses how hard or easy it will be for you to handle a particular sort of binge.
Ultimately, it's still about nothing more than the math and your own strength of will.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:3, Insightful)
Tobacco is still one of the leading causes of death in America and on Earth.
That's not strictly true. The truth is that tobacco increases the risk of contracting several of the leading causes of death. Not the same thing. Heart disease, for instance, is the leading cause of death in the US, with cancer a close 2nd. What certain statisticians do is attribute every death by these causes to tobacco, without accounting for the people that died of them without ever smoking. (You know what they say about statistics, right?)
Keep in mind, also, that it is the facts about the dangers of smoking that drive people to quit. Draconian laws restricting smokers have little if any effect, just as total bans on marijuana and other unsanctioned drugs have failed to have much impact on their consumption. In fact, it can be argued that increasing the authoritative restrictions actual encourage teens to smoke as an symbolic rebellious reaction to authority.
The federal government now also generates significant revenues from smokers, so it is in their interest to keep people smoking. That's the motivation behind their efforts to stop or slow the distribution of "vapor" nicotine delivery systems, which have only a tiny fraction of the dangerous toxic chemicals found in cigarette smoke (recall that nicotine itself is not a carcinogen).
Re:The sugar lobby is worse than oil company lobbi (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:1, Insightful)
They banned smoking in bars and restaurants around here, and maybe all those people are smoking other places, but my shirt doesn't smell like smoke any longer. I find it very hard to believe that consumption hasn't gone down, and maybe some people have quit/not started who otherwise would be smoking today. I'm sure not getting any second hand anymore and I love it.
Why were you going into bars and restaurants where people smoked, if you found it so unpleasant? There are more restaurants that do not allow smoking pretty much everywhere you go in the country. Before they banned restaurant/bar smoking here in Virginia, about 65% of all restaurants were already smoke-free. But good on you that the government has forced restaurant owners to provide an environment preferable to you, even if you didn't patronize them.
I've noticed several things that have happened as a result. One of my favorite restaurants (Milepost 5) went under entirely. They had a pretty regular clientele of smokers that would sit at the bar all night drinking (and eating), and they stopped coming. Another place nearby ignored the law for a while, separating the smokers from non, but eventually they sicked the cops on them, and they had to kick out their regulars.
There are a few places still ignoring the law and letting people smoke, mostly small bars and "dives" with loyal customers that like the way things are. I imagine they'll eventually get to all these places, and I'm sure I'll see more places shut down. A few of the larger ones (that have the space) have started putting up patio tents right off the bar, so patrons can bring their drinks "outside" to the tent to smoke. It's not ideal, but maybe it will keep a few of these innovative places in business.
Scientific Method (Score:5, Insightful)
As a scientist, I like to base my opinions on evidence wherever possible.
Lustig makes strong points which are backed up by studies (cited in his lecture) and are consistent with known biochemical pathways (which he explains).
The vast majority of responses here are complete bunkum: anecdotal evidence, true facts which sound like they are relevant ("you can drown in water!"), and misrepresentation of his central point ("our bodies *need* glucose! He's crazy!")
If you disagree with his position and have evidence to back that up, I'll listen to what you have to say.
Everyone else - you're going to get really frustrated when I don't change my opinion because of what you say.
Let's let evidence and logic have it's moment here.
Re:Sugar is not only toxic but it's addictive. (Score:5, Insightful)
And heroin is "just" purified and crystallized extract of a poppy plant.
Are you saying that just because something "just" comes from a plant that it's got to be good for you?
When you eat fruit, you're getting a lot more than "just" sugar. When you eat "just" sugar, you're not.
Tell you what, I'll eat a balanced diet and you live on high fructose corn syrup and water. Let's see if one is "just" the same as the other. Let's see just how "toxic" sugar can be.
You'll say, "well of course. Everyone should eat a balanced diet." But what's passing in the industrialized groceries of 2011 as a "balanced" diet is creating a society of people who are so fat that before middle age they have to drive around on little scooters just to fill their basket with foods that have a higher concentration of "just" sugar than any civilization that ever walked the earth. And there are entire sections of town where there are absolutely no places to buy produce or simple grains and staples. None. Yet McDonalds and other purveyors of industrial food are on every other corner in those same neighborhoods. How healthy do you think the people in those neighborhoods are going to be?
Of course sugar isn't "toxic". But in the concentrations that it's currently showing up on our grocery shelves it is a major contributor to most of the diseases that are killing people (the ones that are obesity-related).
Re:Curious... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't slightly correlated; it's directly causal. Citing the supposed caloric value of gasoline is just doublespeak. No legitimate biologist would consider the heat value of gasoline to be its dietary caloric value.
The dietary caloric value is the heat value of the digestible components of a substance; that's why the caloric value of celery is so low, even though it's total heat value is much higher - i.e., human beings cannot digest cellulose.
The dietary caloric value of the same celery is much higher for ruminants whose symbiotic digestive systems can derive energy from cellulose.
The big picture is this: no doubt overconsumption of sugar can have negative metabolic effects (e.g., elevated triglycerides). But the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, causing the 300 lb. american, is a simple thermodynamic imbalance; contemporary americans eat much more food than they need for their increasingly sedentary lifestyle. We need, as a nation, to eat less and do more.
Re:water is toxic too (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget all the junk food you mention. How about plain old bread? When I bake bread at home, the ingredients are flour, water, yeast. I might use a pinch of sugar to start the yeast (so it doesn't go into the bread as sugar). Why is it, then, that when I go to the grocery store, every loaf of sliced sandwich bread has been flavored with "a touch of honey" or "a hint of molasses" -- all of which, if you read the ingredients, means HFCS plus some flavorings? Who on Earth decided that we wouldn't eat bread unless it was sweet? And bear in mind, I'm shopping for whole wheat bread -- including all the varieties of nine-grain, oat encrusted bread you can muster -- which is supposedly "the healthy kind." The unhealthy kind? Turns out that when you do eat a Big Mac, some 1/3 of the calories are in the bun.
Quantity/comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is everyone parroting the trope that "everything is toxic in large quantities" without asking whether the modern Western diet is above the threshold of excess? Isn't that what we're talking about here?
I feel like the libertarians in the crowd are trying to dismiss a valid question before it's answered.
Not wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it's toxic... (Score:2, Insightful)
People buy into these claims because it's nice and simple.
That way they can go on a diet that cuts that one single ingredient and replace it by doubling all other ingredients and not feel bad about being fat.
In about half a year they'll start noticing the lower-your-suger-double-everything-else diet doesn't really work and find another scapegoat ingredient.
Repeat ad nauseam.