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?"
This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:5, Interesting)
Calling sugar "toxic" is probably a plot to demean the word "toxic" and make tobacco less regulated.
Either that, or he's fallen for a more subtle form of the Dihydrogen Monoxide troll, perpetrated by the chemistry of sugar itself.
"Processed" vs. "Natural" is Magical Thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no need, and it would be unscientific, to introduce some magical theory of "processed" foods versus "natural"foods: if the chemistry is identical, the biology is identical. The lecture is well grounded in the science of biochemistry.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for (Score:5, Interesting)
Glucose anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that glucose is what our bodies run on, I'd have to say no, sugar is NOT toxic to us. Is having too much sugar bad for you? Certainly. It's about balance. Too much of nearly anything (even water) is going to be bad for you.
everything toxic in large quantities (Score:4, Interesting)
take an apple, 50 calories sugar, 2 g fiber. Healthy food. Horrible fruit stipes, almost twice calories of an apple, less than half he fiber, and can be eaten endlessly.
A few bottles of coke, or fruit punch, several fuit strip snacks, basically what people think is an ok diet, and one has 2000 calories with no nutrition, and hundreds of grams of refined and concentrated sugar, much more than is healthy.
Sorry but it does not meet the criteria (Score:5, Interesting)
A drug is "Articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals."
Sugar is a food as foods are "Any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body."
Indeed it does provide nutritional support for the body, in the form of energy. What's more you find sugar is essential to the function of a body. Glucose is a cell's primary energy storage and metabolic intermediate. Without it, your body does not function.
So sorry, it isn't a drug. Attempting to redefine it doesn't change that and is rather silly. That people eat too much of it is not relevant. Call it a drug because people east too much and you end up calling all foods drugs since people eat too much of all foods, fats, proteins, etc.
RTFA? Oh right you didn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
Where to begin. We can start with the first word of your post. "Lusting" is an activity I enjoy with redheads. Lustig is a scientist.
Secondly, Aragon makes a claim that Lustig doesn't nor does the article if you manage past the first few words. HFCS and sugar are equivalent nutritionally and they're both bad. Fructose is metabolized differently however (Aragon apparently can't read as well and decided to go the whole HFCS vs sucrose thing). Vis a vis the Japanese diet, he also tries to use anecdote (even when all of the posts he cites don't even support him!) and you'd do much better just to measure per capita sugar consumption (you know, sugar made minus sugar exported (or used for non-human consumption)) divided by number of people. This actual data (as cited in the TFA that you didn't read) supports the author's assertion, whereas using the plural of anecdote as data does not. (However, I would kill to have Japanese-style soft drink machines where literally one or two things actually contain sugar. You can't even find unsweetened tea in the states except at specialty stores for the most part.)
Lastly, Aragon plays the wonderful correlation/causality card. Which works for a great number of things, but unfortunately, scientists interesting in societal behavior can't just force people to adhere to their dietary whims randomly.
I'd like to see further research done in say, a controlled environment like a school where some bureaucrat can ban sugar from products the school sells and see if children become healthier. But bringing in thermodynamics to sound smart without the vaguely inclination of what you're even referring to is merely arrogant.
Re:It's complete bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
I can verify both sides of that story. I'm a 6'1" beanpole, a reasonably well-built beanpole, and I don't work out but I do walk regularly, and I was convinced fat people ate way more than me in order to be obese. Checkups show I'm not diabetic (or pre-diabetic), my bloods are fine, and liver/kidney function come out okay.
Then my first flatmare noticed the sheer amount of food I eat. She measured everything she saw me put in my mouth, and I consume anywhere from 6000-9000 calories a day. I eat four times what I should, but come out thin for it. It's not far of a stretch to realise that there are fat people do eat less than me (4000 calories a day should have people packing on weight and well on the way to obesity) or that there are lean people who absorb fewer nutrients than fat folk (which I do, too).
There's a lot more variation in human biology than many people give credit for.
Re:To paraphrase ButtHead (Score:4, Interesting)
are addicted to food. The withdrawal symptoms are worse than for any other drug.
Nah; oxygen addiction is far worse. The withdrawal symptoms include death within minutes. Most people can survive a lack of food for days.
Re:Glucose anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that glucose is what our bodies run on, I'd have to say no, sugar is NOT toxic to us. Is having too much sugar bad for you? Certainly. It's about balance. Too much of nearly anything (even water) is going to be bad for you.
You clearly didn't watch the lecture or have never taken biochemistry. Sugar - sucrose - is a disaccharide. Meaning a molecule of it is comprised of a glucose bonded to a fructose. In your digestive tract, it is broken down into its components - glucose and fructose. Glucose IS fine because every cell in your body utilizes glucose. Lustig stated that quite clearly and even showed evidence that people who consume starch filled foods (starch = long chains of glucose) do NOT get fat. The body doesn't tend to want to convert glucose into fat because it then has to convert it back to glucose - very inefficient. The body stores excess glucose in the liver as glycogen. And while you do need glucose to survive, you do NOT need to eat sugar (or even other carbohydrates) to get glucose. Your body is well equipped to make its own glucose.
Fructose is the problem because its biochemical pathway in the liver leads to fat, especially when you are already getting sufficient glucose, as you are when you eat sugar. In addition, there are other metabolic byproducts which result in inflammation, uric acid (possibly leading to gout), and super dense LDL's which are the actual cause of atherosclerosis (in heart disease). It also wrecks havoc on the normal functioning of the hormones in your body that regulate your hunger mechanisms (as well as regulation of body fat storage).
I'm getting the sense from reading many other comments that are similar to this one that most people don't have a good grasp of what "sugar" actually is. People, watch the lecture before you criticize the theory.
Re:Sugar doesnt 'damage' you. (Score:4, Interesting)
No. The OP is exactly right. Elevated blood glucose levels are quite toxic to the body. Ask anyone with type-1 diabetes why their sense of taste is failing, and why they have to have an eyesight test for their driver's license more often than the rest of us.
In a healthy individual, insulin makes sure blood glucose doesn't stay too high for too long. This does not negate the fact that, while necessary, glucose does have the ability to seriously damage your body.
Re:It's complete bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll admit that I frequently overeat. In fact, I've been doing it for as long as I can remember (including several cans of non-diet soda most days of the week). I don't like sports and I very rarely exercise. Since I stopped growing when I was about 17 or 18, I have gained very little weight (15 years later I only weigh around 170 lbs. at 6'0"). So based on your flippant dismissal--how do you explain my ability to keep the weight off? Do I get visits from magic anti-insulin fairies every night? Could it possibly be that the human body is more complex than the simplistic calories-in/calories-out models makes it out to be?
I think every person with half-a-brain knows that some people are just lucky or unlucky when it comes to being thin or fat (I'll bet you even know people on both sides). I meet people with your mean and angry attitude towards fat people all of the time, and I honestly don't get it. Why make it harder for the unlucky ones by making them feel bad? Sounds a bit like jealousy to me (in other words--you just wish you were eating all of the stuff they are).
Re:Organic vs processed (toxic) sugar. (Score:4, Interesting)
Tests with rats may not be proof but they can be an indicator and are not 'unrelated'. Almost all research agrees that different sugars are different even if it's just that they are sweeter. More sweet per calorie may lead to a slower metabolic response to sweets as well as gorging on sweets according to some indicators (animal testing)
I know this is not the cause and effect proof you are looking for. So far there doesn't appear to be a large well controlled study involving humans. However, for me there are indications that HFCS may have more negative side effects than 'table sugar' and little in the way that it has less negative side effects.
Hopefully, you're free to consume whatever you want.
diabetes research (Score:5, Interesting)
the toxicity of sugar (sucrose, glucose, fructose, etc) is one of things that almost no researcher in the know dares to mention publicly because it would be career (and funding) suicide. the processed food industry is far too powerful a lobby group.
but the researchers know. check medline. almost every research article on diabetes begins with words to the effect of "fed the rats sugar until they developed diabetes". feeding rats sugar is THE consistently reproducible method of inducing diabetes.
and this is what the processed food lobby is doing to consumers every day with sugar in absofuckinglutely everything. even things you think wouldn't have sugar because they're supposed to be salty or sour or savoury or anything-else-but-sweet have sugar in them. because it's cheap, it's addictive (esp. to children and adults with poor impulse control - i.e. most of the population), and it's a preservative.
sugar in our diet isn't bad when it's rare and unrefined (as it is in fruits and vegetables etc. and in our natural pre-agriculture diet it WAS rare, but it was a huge amount of easily absorbed energy which is why we evolved the ability to taste sweetness...and why we also evolved to *like* it). even when humans first discovered processed sugar from sugar cane a few hundred years ago it wasn't a huge problem because it was very expensive (like all spices were) - only the rich could afford it.
even the improvement of refinery processes that made sugar became extremely refined and extremely cheap wasn't that bad....it was only when "food" factories started putting it in *everything* so that it became almost impossible to avoid eating far too much of the stuff that it became a problem.
and this, btw, is also why the poor (and the time-poor) suffer from diabetes more than the rich do - the rich can afford to eat well. the poor can't (money-wise AND time-wise).
Re:Glucose anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that glucose is what our bodies run on, I'd have to say no, sugar is NOT toxic to us. Is having too much sugar bad for you? Certainly. It's about balance. Too much of nearly anything (even water) is going to be bad for you.
Glucose is one of the things our bodies run on. We can also run on ketones. And there is some evidence (controversial, of course) that our bodies run better on ketones than on glucose.
But just because our bodies run on it does not mean that it is non-toxic. There's a reason why unregulated blood sugar (diabetes) is considered a bad thing. High blood sugar causes damaged to capillaries and your retinas, causes neuropathy, all kinds of fun stuff. And we aren't even talking about hitting the LD50 of glucose.
The fact of the matter is that much of our dietary recommendations, like the food pyramid, are not based on good science. Sure, if you take in more calories than you burn you're going to gain weight... But that's an overly simplistic statement. It really depends on what kind of calories you take in, and how the body metabolizes them. There's no link between dietary fat and body fat (beyond the fact that dietary fat is generally calorically dense) - but we're told that low-fat is good. We're told to eat lots of grains and carbohydrates of various types... We start seeing all kinds of nutritionally fortified foods... We start sticking NuVal tags on everything in the supermarket... And obesity skyrockets. And dieticians are still telling folks to avoid fat and have a bowl of cereal instead.
We consume far more sugar in our daily diet than we were ever intended to. Not just glucose, but absolute craptons of fructose. And, whether the corn lobby likes it or not, fructose is not processed the same way glucose is. We consume craptons of starches, too... Dry cereals, various chips and crackers, pasta, potatoes, breads, corn in every form imaginable... All that starch gets converted into sugar eventually.
We'd really be much better off eating more natural fats like nuts, butter, and not-so-lean meat. We'd really be much better off eating more protein from meats, nuts, and beans. We'd really be much better off eating more vegetables. And we'd be a hell of a lot better off if so much of our food didn't come from a box or a freezer or a restaurant.
But industrial agriculture is a huge business... And you've got to do something with all that corn your grow... So we get lobbyists in Washington, and we get recommendations based on bad science, and we get inundated with commercials telling us how much better our lives will be if we just microwave something instead of spending hours in the kitchen... And then folks look amazed at our national epidemic of obesity and diabetes.