It’s easy to have too much of a good thing – especially when it comes to food.
By now, just about everyone knows that sugary soft drinks, desserts, and snack foods are making us fatter and that their sugar content is one of the main reasons why they’re so bad for us. But could sugar be even worse than that? Could it actually be toxic?
More and more researchers are starting to think so, and several have assembled some pretty compelling evidence to support their case.
Robert Lustig’s campaign against sugar
According to Gary Taubes’s widely read New York Times Magazine article published last spring, Robert Lustig, a childhood obesity expert at the University of California, San Francisco, has taken it upon himself to speak out against sugar – a substance he sees not just as a source of empty calories but as “a poison by itself.”
His argument is more or less this: Since the liver is forced to convert sugars into fat when they’re consumed in sufficient quantities, consumption of sugar is the leading culprit in the ongoing obesity epidemic. Obesity, of course, often leads to insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes and/or heart disease.
Sugar, argues Lustig, is the root cause of these maladies. Therefore, the stuff is nothing but poison, pure and simple – a substance that ought to be lumped in with alcohol and tobacco as something that leads to an early death.
And it’s not just high fructose corn syrup that’s to blame. Although the ill effects of that widely demonized food additive are now well known, Lustig claims that sucrose, the white, powdery sugar you spoon into your coffee, is just as nefarious.
But it gets worse.
If sugar leads to insulin resistance, which we’re pretty sure it does, and insulin resistance leads to obesity and diabetes, what does that mean as far as cancer is concerned? After all, it’s widely accepted by most researchers that one’s likelihood of developing cancer increases when he or she is obese and/or diabetic.
Could sugar, then, be a carcinogen? Could it actually cause cancer?
It sounds like a radical notion, and it’s not something experts are even close to agreeing upon. But Lewis Cantley, who directs the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, argues in Taubes’s article that if there’s anything causing insulin resistance – anything besides just being overweight, that is – then that “something” increases our risk of developing cancer.
So… no more desserts? Ever?
If taking the kids out for ice cream is just as bad for their health as letting them smoke a few cigarettes, we may have to seriously reconsider the foods we consume.
But remember that there’s still no consensus on the issue. Back when everyone thought direct consumption of fat led to their being overweight, we all bought fat-free processed foods and thought we were healthier. Since then, we’ve learned that fat isn’t the only culprit and that many fat-free foods are still bad for us in their own way.
If one thing is certain, it’s that we should definitely consume less sugar. Carcinogen or not, empty calories are just that – empty calories. Replacing them with wholesome, nutritious foods (a cliché by now, yes?) is still the way to go.
Adam Green is a freelance writer who avoids eating “sweet stuff” whenever he can. He contributed this article on behalf of Full Circle, an organic produce delivery service.
