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Sugar is “Toxic” And Must Be Taxed Like Alcohol & Tobacco, Says US Scientists

By: EW News Desk Team Date: 2 February 2012

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02 February 2012

Consuming too much sugar is just as harmful and addictive to you as smoking a cigarette or drinking alcohol, claimed researchers from the University of California-San Francisco (USCF) in an editorial published in Nature on Wednesday.

According to Professor Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis, the increased consumption of sugar throughout the US has been primarily responsible for many chronic diseases reaching epidemic levels in the country; with obesity and liver diseases seen to be among the biggest repercussions caused by the over-consumption of the substance.

Authorities as such should consider regulating and taxing sugar in a similar way to tobacco and alcohol, noted the researchers, who linked the product as being indirectly responsible for nearly 35 million annual deaths worldwide.

"The only method for dealing with this is a public health intervention," said Professor Lustig in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Everyone talks about personal responsibility, and that won't work here, as it won't for any addictive substance. These are things that have to be done at a governmental level, and government has to get off its ass."

In their research, Lustig and his co-authors noted that diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, heart and liver disease, were no longer isolated to just the obese. In fact, 40 percent of normal-weight people were developing said diseases, leading the researchers to conclude that sugar was the real problem.

“Many people think that obesity is the root cause of these diseases," they wrote. " But obesity is not the cause; rather, it is a marker."

Still, the US Food and Drink Federation warned that "demonising" food was not as helpful to people as promoting a balanced diet instead. The Sugar Association also denounced the USCF research as “irresponsible” as it “lack the scientific evidence or consensus on which the authors base their recommended policy interventions."

"We consider it irresponsible when health professionals use their platforms to instill fear by using words like 'diabetes,' 'cancer,' and even 'death,' without so much as one disclaimer about the fact that the incomplete science being referenced is inconclusive at best,” said the association in a statement quoted by CNN.

“We are confident that the American people are perfectly capable of choosing what foods to eat without stark regulations and unreasonable bans imposed upon them,” they added.

But the researchers are refusing to back down from their claim, noting the complications on dealing of changing consumption patterns among people as well as “the uphill political battle against a powerful sugar lobby.”

“We're not talking prohibition. We're not advocating a major imposition of the Government into people's lives. We're talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose,” said Professor Schmidt, as cited by PA.

"What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making foods that aren't loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get."