Video: Is All Sugar Toxic?
Sugar, in various forms, has been all over the news in recent weeks. You may be aware, if you’ve seen the “corn sugar” commercials, that the Corn Refiners Association recently decided to rebrand high fructose corn syrup as corn sugar with a massive marketing campaign designed to “educate” the public about its safety and virtues.
Well now, the “real sugar” industry is fighting back with a lawsuit, arguing that equating high fructose corn syrup with real sugar (with slogans like “your body can’t tell the difference”) is false advertising and misleads consumers.
But if you listen to Dr. Robert Lustig, whose 90-minute lecture, Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has been viewed over a million times on YouTube, there’s little reason to argue over the matter. He says that high fructose corn syrup and real sugar (sucrose) are equally bad.
“They’re both dangerous. They’re both poison,” he says.
This video is lengthy, but it’s well worth watching. Dr. Lustig makes a compelling case for why we should be extremely cautious about the amount of sugar that we allow in our diets.
Article updated on: May 8th, 2011
This Lustig video is not worth watching–unless you are trying to understand the extremes in thinking that occur when you focus on one ingredient in our diets. High fructose corn syrup and refined (table) sugar are indistinguishable to the human body. And regarding that sugar industry lawsuit, nutritionist Marion Nestle remarked: “Oh please. Western Sugar is trying to claim that HFCS is not sugar, when it most definitely is.” Well said.