Here’s the thing about sugar. We are raised on it. We are trained as kids to love it. We use it to celebrate and to finish off a good meal.
And it’s killing us.
Up until the 1950s, low-carb diets were the accepted way to stay lean. Yes, it’s true. Low-carb is not some fad that started in the 1970s. Low-carb was the way to lose weight, until scientists discovered that excess fat in our bodies is the cause of so much distress. Heart disease, diabetes, you name it, excess body fat is quite destructive.
So, they reasoned, if excess fat is bad, then we must remove fat from our diets!
This seemed to be sensible, but the science has never upheld the conclusion that fat in our diets leads to fat on our bodies, and the great experiment that has been going on with the American population over the last 5 decades also seems to deny the validity of high-carbohydrate eating.
We have lowered our fat consumption and increased our carbs, and you know what? We are fatter and sicker than ever.
Renowned science writer Gary Taubes illustrates this well in his fully researched and documented book Good Calories, Bad Calories. That book got me almost completely off sugar a few years ago. Then I saw the YouTube video with Dr. Robert Lustig last year, and that sealed the deal for me.
Fnally, mainstream thinking is coming around. That very same Dr. Lustig was the primary expert in a story on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. The story explored the toxicity of the overconsumption of sugar.
Also, on April 1, 2012, the same day they ran the above story, CBS posted this short video interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta entitled “Sugar and Kids: The Toxic Truth“.
I have read some of the comments on the page with the Dr. Gupta video. Of course, people are defensive. Who likes to be told they have been poisoning their kids?
Sugar is found in nature, and there is a safe consumption level. In fact, our sweet taste buds are there to allow us to know if something is safe to eat. Sweet means not poison.
However, in modern society, there is so much sugar pumped into all our foods, so much sugar in soft drinks and juices, that it goes way beyond what nature intended.
And that is the point.
The truth about sugar is finally coming into the mainstream. Will you listen?