The War on Sugar

I have had a comment made by Dr. Harvey Karp stuck in my mind ever since I first saw the documentary Fed Up which I will loosely paraphrase here. If there were an adversary poisoning our children, making them sick and putting their lives in danger, we would declare war against this adversary/country at the drop of a hat. So why do we accept this from our own country?  So how is it possible that we allow the food industry to continuously bombard defenseless children with brainwashing messages that steer them to buy sugar and fat laden food and beverages increasing their risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay, down to behavior issues.

The advertising industry shares part of the responsibility along with the government, schools, parents and the children themselves but at the root of the problem lies with the food industry who hide and manipulate the truth in order to increase profits and fill the pockets of industry executives with more money than any one person can spend in a lifetime and sadly to the detriment of an entire generation.

The truth that is being hidden is reflected in the denial by the food industry that sugar and all its derivatives are harmful to our health as lobbyists influence the US government to protect their interests at all cost.  This is illustrated to perfection in the documentary Fed Up, where the US Government essentially extorts the World Health Organization to eliminate a recommendation that they were planning to publish that stated that no more than 10% of all calories in a daily diet should come from sugar.

Along these same lines, the subsidies that the farmers and food industries receive skew the cost of healthy and non-healthy calories to make the costs of unhealthy foods artificially lower while the healthy foods have to compete in an unfair marketplace.

Worst of all, the U.S. has and continues to export these practices and behaviors all over the world, and as a result is slowly but surely worsening people’s quality of life.
Freedom of choice?  Sugar is more addictive than cocaine.

Educators have also fallen short as far as exercising the influence they have on the latest generation.  Education is the key weapon to combatting obesity and poor health practices while instilling healthy and sustainable dietary habits.

One final note: I’ve created manageable video clips from the movies Fed Up and Food Inc. with embedded questions and comments to spark debate and I  have provided the transcript to the scene from the movie Fed Up but both these movies are «MUST SEES» in their entirety.  Since 2014 things only seem to be getting worse and only we can change the behavior of the companies who try to influence our decisions by declaring a «war on sugar» and  «VOTING» with our wallets and buying intelligently.

Glossary:
Fed up – full from eating or sick and tired of (disgusted with) the current situation.
stuck – unable to move
at the drop of a hat – immediately, in no time at all
steer – guide, push, influence
skew – distort, influence

RELATED VIDEOS
Official Fed Up Web with educational material
Fed Up (Youtube)
Food Inc. (In English with Portuguese subtitles)
Supersize Me (low-quality image)

Articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24bittman.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2121216-junk-food-tax-and-veg-subsidies-could-add-500000-years-of-life/
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/white-poison-danger-sugar-beat-article-1.1605232