Abstract Is sugar a drug and should it be regulated like one? Do many people believe that since sugar affects the mind of an individual the same as some drugs that it should be regulated like one? Do individuals want to treat sugar as if it's alcohol and not make it illegal but put a age limit? People know that if they make regulated sugar people will still get it easily because it is everywhere. If sugar was regulated or was needed to be reduced in foods many companies would be mad. Many food companies rely on sugar in there foods for better sells and money. Sugar in foods is what makes their products addictive and liked to consumers. Researchers believe that sugar can be more addictive than hardcore drugs. Body “Almost everyone’s heard But it’s doubtful that Americans will look favorably upon regulating their favorite vice. We’re a nation that’s sweet on sugar: the average U.S. adult downs 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, according to the American Heart Association, and surveys have found that teens swallow 34 teaspoons.” By consuming sugar consumers can experience what's known as a “sugar high” a sugar high can have the same effects drugs and alcohol cause. But since sugar is in our everyday lives it would be hard to regulate it. Research shows that the average adult consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day the average teen consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar. America is a country that loves sugar from soda to cereal everything has sugar. “Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, argued in the journal Nature that sugar is addictive and toxic—that it can poison the liver, cause metabolic syndrome (increasing the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes), suppress the brain’s dopamine system, and cause us to crave more. Lustig concluded, controversially, that sugar should be regulated like a drug. Alcohol is regulated because of its ubiquity, toxicity, abuse, and negative impact on society, he wrote, and ‘sugar meets the same criteria.’” Robert Lustig wrote a journal saying that sugar is addictive and a toxin. It says that it poisons the liver and it suppresses the dopamine Alcohol and tobacco are a little different. They affect the lives of not only the individual, but others around them. Drunk driving and abuse, as well as secondhand smoke, affects the lives of non drinkers and non smokers. The amount of sugar a person consumers, well, that’s a personal problem.” Consuming sugar is not bad for your body if you know your limits and know when to start. Sugar should not be regulated because not everyone abuses it. Why would we regulated a substance that only affects the person consuming it. Unlike smoking where not only the person smoking is getting affected but also the people who are near him. Also alcohol can affect others because if a person is drunk and drives they are putting everyone's life at risk who is on the road with them. “there’s a fundamental difference between the sugar that you find in fruits & vegetables and the sugar that you find in a large Mountain Dew. The sugar in a lot of these carbonated drinks is highly concentrated simple sugar, the kind that will spike your blood glucose levels, reduce your insulin response over time (leading to Type 2 diabetes) and almost immediately get stored in your body as fat.” There is a difference between sugar from nature and sugar that is processed. Sugar that is processed is highly concentrated because of this it tends to increase your blood glucose levels higher than natural sugar. With high
According to the article, Too Much Can Make Us Sick (http://www.sugarscience.org/too-much-can-make-us-sick/), “Heart disease. Diabetes. These chronic conditions are among the leading causes of death worldwide. Increasingly, scientists are focusing on a common set of underlying metabolic issues that raise people's risk for chronic disease. It turns out that the long-term overconsumption of added sugars is linked to many of these dysfunctions.” This means that people living today, have a lot more trouble with diseases because of our unhealthy sugar intake compared to the
Jon Gabriel explains how sugar has become an addictive drug like nicotine, the only difference is that its legal. Once we become hooked on it we become habituated to its effects and need more and more to satisfy ourselves. As a result of the increase in marketing and the on going dependence on sugary foods and beverages, children are taking in more and more sugar and obtaining less and less nutrients. According to Gentry Lasater,
However, the outcome was different from his desired result due to strong protest from the dairy and livestock industry, so the Congress instead urged people to buy lean meat and less fat food so the dairy and livestock industry do not go out of business. This created the fat-free boom in the market in the 1980s. However, food companies began to put more sugar in their products because the taste was bad when they reduced fat in the food. Now, the sugar intake of Americans has doubled compared with before. In the American market, there are approximately 600,000 different food products, and 80% of those include sugar. Although sugar is written in various forms and names, one suggests that it’s bad in any form, especially if taken too much. Sugar consumed naturally through fiber-rich fruit or vegetable should be fine, but the added sweeteners stimulate the hormones that increase insulin. High insulin prevents people from thinking they are full, and thus crave more food. This causes many diseases. Of course one meal high in sugar will not kill them, but the problem is that people generally exceed daily sugar intake in one meal alone when consuming process food. We eat more processed and convenient food instead of fruits, vegetables, and
After reading "The Toxic Truth About Sugar" and "Banning the Big Gulp", I am not entirely convinced that government intervention is necessary. Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis' article practically clarifies the the dangers of sugar itself, while Bittman's article passionately discusses the temporary cessation of the decision to ban/restrict the sale of over-proportioned drinks. Although, as Lustig and his colleagues pointed out, sugar has potential for addiction and other long term detriment to health and economy, the authors failed to acknowledge the fact that people can still watch what they eat. For example, a 1.9lb (862g) bag of Sour Patch Kids contains approximately 550 grams of sugar; 26g per single serving of 16 pieces (40g). Lustig and his
Sugar consumption in the U.S. has increased by 19 percent since 1970. Americans consume around 30 teaspoons of added sugar per day that’s about a half of a cup! When the A.H.A. (American Heart Association) only recommends about six teaspoons daily, that’s pretty horrific. How is it that we Americans are so used to consuming more than we need? Is it the fact that we are oblivious to what we are consuming, or in all reality, are we just addicted to sugar?
One of the required nutrition facts is the sugar content. If someone wants to know how much sugar there is in a soda, all they have to do is look at the nutrition facts. If a law requires a warning label because soda has high sugar content, it would make sense for all items with high sugar content to have warning labels. One 12oz can of Cherry 7-Up has 38 grams of sugar. 12 ounces of VH Splash juice has 27 grams of sugar, then we would need warning labels on juice. What about candy? A snickers bar has 27 grams of sugar, more than two thirds the amount of sugar as a can of soda. This sounds like a lot of sugar to me. What about breakfast cereal? 2 cups of fruit loops has 20 grams of sugar, requiring a warning label. Why stop with processed sugar? A pineapple has 89 grams of sugar, more than 2.3 times the amount of sugar than a can of soda. If we need warning labels on soda, then we definitely need a warning label on pineapples. Fat, chemicals, preservatives are all just as unhealthy as sugar. Should we put warning labels on these things too? The sugar content of soda is on the
The article,“ Battle lines drawn over soda tax,” by Associated Press , the Press explains how there is an ongoing “national fight about taxing sugary drinks.” According to Associated Press, “ Health experts say the beverages contribute to health issues such as diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay.” This quote demonstrates that sugary drinks can lead to health issues. Since sugary drinks leads to health issues, people are considering soda tax. This is because thirteen percent of adult minorities are diagnosed with diseases such as diabetes.
“To do nothing… would be reckless from a public health and a fiscal standpoint” (Jacobson, 2012, para. 5). When someone uses the word epidemic, we think of sick people or a horrifying disease. That is not what most people think about when they see a bottle of their favorite soda. This has become much more than routine heath concerns. Soda and sugary drinks have become an epidemic in the world, with much of this found in our very own country. In recent years, studies have shown that sugar has increased in our everyday foods, it has also caused the rate of obesity to go soaring, as well as other health issues, namely: diabetes, heart disease, and other diet-related conditions (Jacobson, 2012, para. 2). Do we need all this excess sugar in our
Sugary soft drinks should be taxed in order to change people’s habit of drinking these towards the goal of
The people should control the amount of sugar consumption due to its devastating effect on our bodies. Sugar does more harm than good to our body, for example, it affects our concentration, it is easily addictive, and it keeps our body to function properly.
We are all familiar with sugar. It is sweet, delicious, and addictive; yet only a few of us know that it is deadly. When it comes to sugar, it seems like most people are in the mind frame knowing that it could be bad for our health, but only a few are really taking the moderate amounts. In fact, as a whole population, each and everyone of us are still eating about 500 extra calories per day from sugar. Yes, that seems like an exaggerated number judging from the tiny sweet crystals we sprinkle on our coffee, but it is not. Sugar is not only present in the form of sweets and flavourings, it is hidden in all the processed foods we eat. We have heard about the dangers of eating too much fat or salt, but we know very little about the harmful effects of consuming too much sugar. There still isn’t any warnings about sugar on our food labels, nor has there been any broadcasts on the serious damages it could do to our health. It has come to my concern during my research that few
There has been much discussion over how sugar affects the minds of young people, around the world. Sugar has been banned in schools such as in places like California and New York. Is sugar actually causing children to be hyperactive and failing grades? Or is sugar improving their attention span and their IQ?
Ranging from heart disease to diabetes the consequences of unhealthy eating are well known across the population, yet not much is being done to stop this. According to the World Health Organization, it is projected that by 2030, Diabetes will become the 7th leading cause of death in the world. Why let things spiral out of control and continue postponing a sugar tax? If there is anything that the US government can do is impose this tax. Even if the change is small in comparison to the entire population of the US, these are potential lives being saved. Just like the worst case scenario of smoking is lung cancer, the worst case scenario of obesity is diabetes. Excess sugar should be considered as big of a threat as any other potentially addictive chemical, and should therefore be taxed like one for the safety of the
If you are not convinced, a very prominent side effect of this shift is seen in the Australian child obesity statistics. According to the ABS, in 2008, a staggering 25% of Australian children were suffering from obesity and the amount of obese boys aged 5-17 has doubled since 1995. That is a quarter of children gasping for air as they merely walk. A major cause of these terrifying statistics is due to sugar alone. A report from the Australian newspaper said “Children consume three times more sugar than is recommended. Soft drinks are the biggest source, accounting for 29% of the sugar intake of 11 to 18 year olds and 16% for younger children.” Soft drink consumption in Australia has shot up from an average of 65 litres per year in the early 1970s to about 100 litres today. We as a nation can no longer hide away from this epidemic, if we continue with our current habits then our children’s futures are already written for them. Their lives will become ones of suffering and short life expectancies. We need to stop this now before obesity kills our
Have you ever thought how much soda you consume and how bad it can be for you? Many people will drink soda instead of water, simply because it tastes better. The government should limit the intake of sugary beverages because it can lead to many different problems such as heart disease, obesity, and overall it is an unhealthy life-style. “The average person consumes almost 100lbs of sugar a year, with the single biggest source being soda.” A sugary beverage occasionally would be ok, but drinking it every day would cause problems for you overtime. People drink, more soda than they do water. People should be consuming at least eight 8-ounce glasses a day. Mostly no one will drink that amount of water a day. In today’s society, it can be easy to grab a soda for one dollar and carry on. They may taste better but they are not better for your health. “Sugary drinks include soda, fruit punch, lemonade, and other “aides” sweetened powdered drinks, and sports energy drinks.”