Experts strongly recommend the introduction of social control over sugar
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Sugar should be controlled, as well as alcohol or tobacco, says a team of UCSF researchers who note in their report that sugar is the cause of the global pandemic of obesity, killing 35 million people worldwide, as many as non-infectious diseases ( diabetes, heart, cancer) combined.
According to the United Nations, noncommunicable diseases now pose a greater risk to human health worldwide than infectious diseases. Questions about the abuse of sugar, its toxicity and widespread diet in the West are raised in a report of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), published in the journal Nature.
According to scientists, sugar is far from simply "empty calories" that cause obesity. It also leads to increased blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to health. World sugar consumption has tripled in the last 50 years and is seen as the main cause of the obesity epidemic.
"While the public believes that sugar is just" empty calories, "we have no chance to solve this global problem," said Lustig, professor of pediatrics, endocrinology department at the UCSF hospital.
"There are good and bad calories, just as there are good and bad fats, good and bad amino acids, good and bad carbohydrates," Lustig said. "But sugar is toxic not only because of its calories."
Limit sugar consumption is very difficult because of the problems of awareness of the population about its potential toxicity. "We recognize that there are cultural and festive aspects of eating sugar," said Brindis, co-author of the study. "Changing these models is very difficult"
The authors of the report argue that society should abandon the significant consumption of sugar, and the public should be better informed about the negative aspects of sugar.
"There is a huge gap between what we know and what we practice in fact," said Schmidt, co-author of the report from the Philip R. R. UCSF Institute.
"In order to move the solution of this problem from a dead center, this issue should be recognized as the main task at the global level," he said.
Many of the activities that helped reduce alcohol and tobacco use can serve as models for solving the sugar problem, for example, the introduction of special sales taxes, access control, and tightening of licensing requirements for vending machines and snack bars that sell products with high sugar content in schools and in the workplace.
"We do not prohibit, we do not interfere in people's lives, we talk about soft ways to reduce sugar consumption," Schmidt concluded.
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