Forget about ISIS and
terrorists. We are killing ourselves without their help. No guns. Just spoons
and forks. Americans are eating ourselves into poor health and major diseases.
Just ask the authors of the three books I have been reading: (1) JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Hidden
Sugars, Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks; (2) Suicide by Sugar: a Startling Look at Our #1 National Addiction; (3)
Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against
Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. The authors, respectively, are
JJ Virgin, Nancy Appleton and G.N. Jacobs, and Robert H. Lustig.
These three books have
scary titles that describe their content. They all point out in different ways
that sugar and related sweeteners plus processed foods have made Americans and
people around the world heavier and sicker than they were in the 1980s and
earlier. They tell us about the science of our metabolisms and how sugars,
especially high fructose corn syrup, are in almost all processed foods in
addition to obvious sweetening additions to our meals. They also suggest ways
to reverse our copious use of sweet things. They know whereof they speak. The
three books are sprinkled with stories about people who turned their lives
around.
JJ Virgin is a bestselling
author who has appeared in television, magazines and blogs. Her book is chatty
and appears aimed at women who enjoy light reading. It also has content with
its conversational style.
Nancy Appleton has a BS in
clinical nutrition and a PhD in health services, and has a private practice in
California. G.N. Jacobs is a reporter and filmmaker. Appleton focuses on sugar as addictive for
many people. Her story is about homeostasis, which she says is “the internal
balance of the body’s electro-magnetic and chemical systems.” She says our
bodies need balance for health: “Our bodies heal when we are in homeostasis.”
It takes a book to make this sound relevant and interesting.
Robert H. Lustig is a
medical doctor who has spent twenty years treating childhood obesity and
studying the effects of sugar on the central nervous system and metabolism.
Lustig is somewhat trendy now and appeared this week on Wisconsin Public
Television in addition to being on YouTube and publishing a DVD with
information about sugar consumption. In addition, I have spotted him on the
Doctor Oz Show. Lustig’s book is the most scientific and is less easy to read
than the others, but the person who reads it all learns a lot about how sugar
is bad for our metabolisms from birth throughout life.
It looks as if we need to
slow down on sugar consumption and that it isn’t easy for most people. The
three authors agree that Americans get hooked on sweet foods, especially soda
and processed foods, and it is giving us metabolic syndrome, which according to
Lustig is a cluster of five chronic conditions familiar to most people: “obesity,
diabetes, lipid problems such as high triglyceride and low HDL, hypertension, cardiovascular
disease), any or all of which increase your chance of early death.” (Lustig, p.
94.) Lustig’s ongoing statement is, “a calorie is not a calorie,” meaning that
calories are not all alike. Broccoli and soda are very different. Appleton’s
list of factors for metabolic syndrome includes elevated blood pressure,
elevated C-reactive protein, high fasting blood glucose levels, high
triglycerides, a large waistline, low levels of HDL, raised LDL, and raised
total cholesterol levels.
Appleton has a chapter
that gives 140 reasons why sugar is ruining your health. She gives a list of
thirty-one forms of sugar. She says Americans eat sugar and other similar
sweeteners at about forty-eight teaspoons per person per day, while about two teaspoons
of added sugar two or three times a day is usually the body’s threshold for
added sugar. Virgin says that the average American eats about twenty-two
teaspoons of sugar every day. I don’t know where they get their statistics, but
either figure is a lot of sweet stuff. Virgin says, “It will blow your mind
when you see how much sugar is sneaking into your diet—mountains of it, even in
things you would swear have no added sugar.” (Virgin, p. xv.)
Virgin talks about hidden
sugars that are in the processed foods that many people eat. She says, “…refined
sugar by itself is a bad thing (especially liquid sugars like juice and soda),
but you should avoid processed foods with added sugar and fat together at all
costs—it’s a fat-storing, metabolically toxic combo.” (Virgin, p. 43.) She
rates sugars into low, medium and high impact in accordance with the damage
they can do. She has suggestions on how to eat in restaurants and fast food
places. She says that exercise is good but we need to get our eating right
first. She tells us to go easy on grains, roots and fruit, low-fat and no-fat
dairy and diet foods, sweet drinks and dressings, and sweeteners and added
sugars.
Lustig compares food
addiction to established criteria for substance dependence. He’s the doctor, so
he gives us an essay on what constitutes addiction: seven criteria, of which an
addict usually has three: tolerance, withdrawal, binging, desire or attempts
to quit, craving or seeking, interference with life, and use despite negative
consequences. (Lustig, p. 55-56.) He expresses concern that many obese children
come to his office and that type 2 diabetes is becoming common in children as
well as adults. He says the goal of obesity management is to keep insulin down.
He tells us about insulin and other hormones that affect our eating.
The three say in various
ways that it’s not our fault. The food industry is in there with thousands of appealing
processed foods. People are eating fast food in their busy lives. School lunch
programs give kids processed sugary foods. Deceptive advertising is ubiquitous. Our way of living and eating is a big
problem, but not insurmountable. Virgin has chapters that tell how to taper,
transition and transform. Appleton offers three food plans to follow. Appleton and Virgin give recipes to help
people who need help. All three give suggestions that can make a difference. Lustig calls for global sugar reduction
because the problem is not just American.
It’s about our health. If
everyone stopped eating sugars, our medical establishment would shrink, food
processors would need to change or cease to exist, and we all would feel a lot
better and have longer lives. Yes, sweet foods are delicious and hard to
resist. But life and health are precious. Virgin in her chatty way says, “So
let me shout this from the mountaintop—it’s the impact of sugar that matters.
You don’t have to eliminate sugar completely, but you need to choose your
sugars wisely.” (Virgin, p. xiv.)
