{"id":7820,"date":"2011-04-14T09:12:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T13:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?p=7820"},"modified":"2011-07-19T17:44:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T21:44:27","slug":"sugar-is-not-so-sweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2011\/04\/14\/sugar-is-not-so-sweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Is Not So Sweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You may want to skip your Sunday sweet this week. On Sunday, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/17\/magazine\/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=2&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all\">the  <em>New York Times<\/em> magazine section will publish a major assault  on sugar<\/a> by the veteran and often controversial journalist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.garytaubes.com\/\">Gary  Taubes<\/a>. In a long and detailed feature article, Taubes outlines the  case for the prosecution against sugar, along with its nearly identical  and ubiquitous cousin, high-fructose corn syrup, which he argues may  well be a chronic toxin that can cause not only obesity, cardiovascular  disease, and diabetes, but also cancer. Taubes writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It very  well may be true that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, because of the  unique way in which we metabolize fructose and at the levels we now  consume it, cause fat to accumulate in our livers followed by insulin  resistance and metabolic syndrome, and so trigger the process that leads  to heart disease, diabetes and obesity. They could indeed be toxic, but  they take years to do their damage. It doesn&#8217;t happen overnight. Until  long-term studies are done, we won&#8217;t know for sure.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding cancer, Taubes follows the scientific trail linking insulin  and insulin-like growth factor to many human cancers. He writes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">If it&#8217;s  sugar that causes insulin resistance&#8230; then the conclusion is hard to  avoid that sugar causes cancer \u2014 some cancers, at least \u2014 radical as  this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if  ever been voiced before publicly.<\/p>\n<p>Taubes acknowledges that the evidence isn&#8217;t perfect, but wryly  concludes with the words: &#8220;Officially I\u2019m not supposed to worry because  the evidence isn&#8217;t conclusive, but I do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Readers may be interested to learn that Taubes&#8217;s perspective aligns  closely with that of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chc.ucsf.edu\/coast\/faculty_lustig.htm\">Robert  Lustig<\/a>, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF. Lustig has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM\">a YouTube video  lecture about sugar<\/a> that has received more than 800,000 views (and  will probably get a whole lot more views after Sunday).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may want to skip your Sunday sweet this week. On Sunday, the New York Times magazine section will publish a major assault on sugar by the veteran and often controversial journalist Gary Taubes. In a long and detailed feature article, Taubes outlines the case for the prosecution against sugar, along with its nearly identical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[297,805,804,803],"class_list":["post-7820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prevention","tag-diet","tag-fructose","tag-insulin-resistance","tag-sugar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}