one lump or two?
I have a confession to make: When nothing else is on the goggle-box I do occasionally enjoy a good gawp at the likes of Supersize vs Superskinny and Celebrity Fat Club. I know it’s ‘car-crash’ television of the lowest common denominator but I can’t help myself and it’s only a bit of fun, isn’t it. Isn’t it? Well, no it ain’t.
Obesity is big business, literally and metaphorically. None other than the UN Secretary General has recently stated that non-communicable disease – diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease are the classic examples – is a bigger threat to the entire world, than is infectious disease. Uh oh. He goes on to explain that these diseases and conditions kill upwards of 35 million people every single year, that there are 30% more obese than undernourished people in the world and last year there were almost 400 million diabetics. At this point he kinda had my attention.
So, where have all the obese people come from and how did they get that way? Perhaps surprisingly, fat certainly ain’t the culprit. About 35 years ago the western developed world made a very conscious decision to whole-heartedly embraced low-fat diet and lifestyle. We intentionally took fat out of everything and do you know what, everything from yoghurt to bolognaise sauce tasted horrid. Faced with falling sales the giant food suppliers did what they had to do to raise sales (and profits): stuff everything with sugar. Well, not sugar per se but the carbohydrates high-fructose corn syrup and sucrose that it’s now dressed up as.
Consequently, consumption of ‘sugar’ in Britain has risen by over 30% since 1990 and we each now eat 1.25 lbs of the stuff. There are seven spoonfuls in a can of diet coke, 17 in a glass of pomegranate juice (if you’ve ever tasted a raw pomegranate you’ll know why!), Slimfast is 60% sugar. Fancy a hot-dog? Yep there’s glucose-fructose in the sausage, the bread roll and even the ketchup. And the onions will have been genetically engineered and ‘spliced’ to be sweeter in order to keep pace with its bed-partners. I’ll bet 90% of the stuff you buy from Waitrose is contaminated with the stuff and if this is giving you a headache go take a pill…as they’re all sugar coated these days. The irony is that sale of actual sugar, the Tate & Lyle white sweet stuff that you remember from your youth is actually in rapid decline…as we know it’s not that good for us!
Just say no. It’s all about will-power. Yeah, in some/many instances I’m sure this is the case but there is a bit of science that needs to be taken into account. Too much glucose-fructose causes leptin, the ‘satiety hormone’ (the one that tells us to put down that slice of pizza!) gets turned off. The sugar we then eat causes us to produce too much insulin, which in turn causes blood-sugar crashes and the subsequent need for sugar…and so on, ad infinitum. Next stop: diabetes.
Sugar as poison is a helluva step to take but it may be one we have to contemplate. And in doing so we have to contemplate the actions necessary to restrict its supply: double the price of your favourite fizz, ban children from sweet counters, set a minimum age for pop purchase, ban advertising and force the food industry to restrict its use? It’s not impossible as our approach to drinking and smoking has shown but there’s a great anecdote doing the rounds indicating just how important the food industry is to the western economy and how difficult it’s going to be to change this: apparently several years ago Bill Clinton was in flagrante with Monica in the oval office and the only call he’d take, the only interruption he allowed was from one Alfonso Fanjul. No, he wasn’t a full-on Italian stallion offering Bill his latest tips, he was a Florida sugar baron and was calling to complain about a proposed sugar tax the Democrats were contemplating. Bill took the call and the tax was dropped!
