CBC TV secrets of sugar

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The fifth estate aired a documentary examining the role of sugar in making people fat and sick.

So it aired last night and what came out

Students are being used as guinea pigs as scientists are feeding them sugar in drinks to figure out if it raises the markers for heart disease.

Every time they’ve run their blood tests, Dr. Kimber Stanhope says the results have been the same.

“In two weeks we see increases in the risk factors for cardiovascular disease in the blood,” says Stanhope.

Stanhope can’t speak to the other studies but says she has tested different types of sugars on her test patients and it is only fructose that causes the problems.

“If I had results as strong with regard to a food additive, a brand new food additive, and then I started producing these results? That additive would get pulled pretty quickly,” says Stanhope.

Stanhope isn’t the only researcher raising the alarm about sugar.

Dr. Lewis Cantley who heads the Cancer Center at New York’s Weill Cornell Medical College has been so frightened from his research that he’s abandoned almost all sugar consumption.

“I think that eating too much sugar can definitely increase probability of cancer, and also make the outcome of people who have cancer worse.’

Dr. Suzanne de la Monte from Brown University wants us to add dementia to the growing list of diseases blamed on high consumption of added sugar.

“Insulin resistance, we now know, can occur in any organ. It can occur in the muscles--- that’s what diabetes is… And it can occur in the brain, and we think that’s Alzheimer’s.”

De la Monte has done her research by feeding healthy rats the equivalent of a North American diet, complete with all the sugars and fat. All her rats ended up demented.

Despite this emerging research, associations on both sides of the border for Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and Health Canada and the FDA have refused to link sugar and disease. But there is one important group that is raising the alarm.

The American Heart Association now recommends that people that cut back on added sugar dramatically. Women should have no more than six teaspoons a day, men nine.

And yet the Canadian food industry remains unimpressed.




My buddy says this is like the tobacco wars all over again and get this get this



Food industry insider warns of ‘national epidemic’
But documents obtained by the fifth estate show that the food industry has known – and discussed -- how the potential links between processed foods and diseases for a long time.

Fourteen years ago, about a dozen of the most powerful heads of food companies in North America, including Coca Cola, Kraft and Nestle Canada gathered in an auditorium on the 31st floor of the Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis on April 8, 1999.

They were attending a dinner that took place every two years for food industry titans. This was the first year obesity was the focus for the presentation that preceded the dinner.

Michael Mudd, at the time the VP of communications at Kraft, made the presentation. He warned the food executives that if they didn’t do something to curb obesity, they would be facing lawsuits down the road.

As he spoke, slides demonstrating the link between processed food and diseases such as cancer and heart disease are presented overhead.

Tobacco companies had recently settled a massive lawsuit in the face of evidence that their product caused disease. Did the food industry, he asked, want to be next?

“If anyone in the food industry ever doubted there was a slippery slope out there, I imagine they are beginning to experience a distinct sliding sensation right about now,” Mudd tells the audience.

According to New York Times reporter Michael Moss, who wrote a book that looked in part at Big Sugar , the CEO of General Mills, Stephen Sanger, was livid with Mudd and refused to participate in his proposal for food companies to pool money to tackle the rise in obesity.

14 years later in March of 2013 Mudd would go on to write a scathing editorial slamming his former colleagues in the food industry. After years of trying to encourage them to take some responsibility for the health crisis in North America, he publicly broke his silence for the first time in the New York Times editorial.

Mudd wrote, “The industry is guilty because it knew what the consequences of its actions might be… It’s time to end the charade and mandate the needed change that the industry has refused to make.”

Here is the blog
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-secrets-of-sugar

Replies

  • Cadori
    Cadori Posts: 4,810 Member
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    My buddy says...

    :drinker: Don't mind me. Drinking game in progress.
  • Cranquistador
    Cranquistador Posts: 39,744 Member
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    My buddy says...

    :drinker: Don't mind me. Drinking game in progress.
    drink!!!
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,669 Member
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    The key phrase here is "TOO MUCH SUGAR". Mild to moderate consumption would reveal different results I'm sure. Especially if people were exercised after consumption
    Not disregarding the science, just making sure that it's not just sugar consumption that's touted as bad.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness industry for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    Buddy sure is hung up on the tobacco industry! Bottoms up!
  • SLLRunner
    SLLRunner Posts: 12,942 Member
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    Thank you for sharing the article, but I agree with a previous poster who said the key is "too much sugar."

    If I gorge on the sugar, I soar and then crash and then feel pretty sick, like I'm hung over.

    If I eat just one brownie or one small piece of something that has sugar, I feel fine.

    I think anything can be taken to an extreme. :smile:
  • Alluminati
    Alluminati Posts: 6,208 Member
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    You are all up in sugar's mug. Leave sugar alone. She doesn't wanna date you.
  • I_Will_End_You
    I_Will_End_You Posts: 4,397 Member
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    My buddy says...

    :drinker: Don't mind me. Drinking game in progress.


    If we're playing drinking games, I'll stay in this thread instead of exiting quickly.


    Wasn't there another one on this last night?
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    There was one last night leading up to the viewing of this documentary but buddy ( or the voice in her head she calls buddy) wanted to be sure we got their feedback and slam the tobacco industry again.

    This rounds on me!
  • 5ftnFun
    5ftnFun Posts: 948 Member
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    You and your "buddy". May I suggest to you both that "Me and My Shadow" be your song? Every couple should have one.
  • 5ftnFun
    5ftnFun Posts: 948 Member
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    You are all up in sugar's mug. Leave sugar alone. She doesn't wanna date you.

    :laugh:
  • Mokey41
    Mokey41 Posts: 5,769 Member
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    My buddy says this is like the tobacco wars all over again and get this get this

    Are you from Newfie land by chance? When my daughter went to Memorial she kept talking about buddy and the mrs. Finally found out buddy was any man and his wife/girlfriend was the mrs.
  • PikaKnight
    PikaKnight Posts: 34,971 Member
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    My buddy says...

    :drinker: Don't mind me. Drinking game in progress.

    Hot chocolate okay?

    tumblr_mfig91xxHO1r8ysxso2_250.gif
  • Lichent
    Lichent Posts: 157 Member
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    then there is the men who made us fat series
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owekbSp7wU0
  • Lichent
    Lichent Posts: 157 Member
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    oh dear Count Chocula
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/22/general-mills-halloween-cereals-count-chocula-franken-berry-seasonal-promotions/2826139/

    Count Chocula may have finally met his match: nutritionists.

    Even as General Mills rolls out a record five Halloween-theme "Monster Cereals" this month, three nutritional experts are speaking out to warn that parents should think twice before carting the seasonal cereals home, adding to the Halloween season's sugar overload.

    At issue: too much sugar, too many dyes and not enough fiber. The cereals, which sell for about $2.50 a box, go by the kid-friendly names of Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Frute Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy.

    "Amidst Halloween's tsunami of junk foods, kids certainly shouldn't be encouraged to consume even more sugar, refined flour and artificial colorings in the form of breakfast cereals," says Michael Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

    For major food companies such as General Mills, holidays are a unique opportunity. For the stagnant, $7.7 billion ready-to-eat cereal industry, Halloween-theme cereal is a way to create excitement. But in a nation increasingly concerned with nutrition, some seasonal promotions that have been popular for years are now getting second looks.

    "Maybe they hope that moms will be happy the products aren't candy and snap up the boxes," says Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. "But the cereals sure look like candy to me: sugar and marshmallows."

    General Mills executives declined to be interviewed. But Carla Vernon, marketing director for the General Mills "Big G" cereals line, says, in an e-mail, that 60% of the consumption of Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry is by adults, not kids.

    There is no direct advertising support for Monster cereals. But the promotion is getting at extra lift at Target stores, which is selling the cereal in special "retro" packaging.

    Six years ago, General Mills reduced the amount of sugar in Monsters Cereals from 15 grams per serving to 9 grams. "So, a cereal like Count Chocula has 100 calories and 9 grams of sugar per serving," Vernon says in the e-mail. All the cereals contain at least 8 grams of whole grain per serving and are fortified with calcium and vitamin D.

    While the nutritionists generally applaud the sugar reduction, they remain critics of the cereals.

    Jacobson, at CSPI, notes that nearly one-third of the cereal is still sugar, and much of the flour is refined — meaning the ingredients are low in fiber. Also, he says, the dyes "trigger hyperactivity in some children."

    At a time when many food makers are responding to consumer concerns about empty calories and questionable ingredients, "this Halloween promotion looks like business as usual," laments Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

    Nestle, the nutrition professor, advises parents who want their kids to eat healthy to abide by her general rule: Never buy a food product with a cartoon on the front.