Is Sugar Toxic?

a_hanso tips an article by Gary Taubes in the NYTimes Magazine that evaluates claims from Dr. Robert Lustig's virally popular lecture on the negative effects of sugar on peoples' health. (YouTube video of the lecture.) Taubes discusses the science behind the claims and the odd willingness of people to accept Lustig's arguments without further inspection. Quoting: "When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment 'surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,' not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us. This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?"

Comments

Yes, it's toxic...

[Anonymous Coward]

just ask an authority on this topic, and that of health in general, for that matter: Ray Kurzweil.

Re:Yes, it's toxic...

[ClimberPunk]

Yea, but he was on the Colbert Report. So that makes him like 1000x more authoritative on any topic than an expert in the field, and at least an order of magnitude greater than someone who slept in a Motel 6.

Sugar: The Gateway Drug

[Haedrian]

It starts off with a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee...

Before long, you're eating tons of it, snorting it, injecting it into the blood.

Then you need harder stuff...

Just ask the Romans

[MrEricSir]

The Romans didn't use sugar; they sweetened their food with lead.

Point being that just because we put it in every food we eat doesn't mean it's safe or healthy.

Re:This is not the logic you are looking for

[Moryath]

You are clearly mistaken.

Death remains our nation's, and the world's, top killer.

Re:Dramatic effect and scientific precision

[Anonymous Coward]

tldr;

Summary:

Instead of a spoonful of sugar in your coffee, put a potato.

Re:This is not the logic you are looking for

[maxwell demon]

But 100% of all people who died have been drinking dihydrogen monoxide during most of their life (not always in pure form, though). Some died from withdrawal symptoms, though.

Of course, sugar is a chemical compound of carbon and DHMO (sugar is C6H12O6, that is 6 C + 6 H2O), therefore it's only natural to assume that the toxicity of DHMO is also found in sugar.

Also if you eat sugar, your body creates carbon dioxide from the carbon in it. Therefore eating sugar is bad for the climate (for the same reason, you shouldn't do sports; the climate effect happens only if you actually burn the sugar, not if you produce fat from it).

SCNR :-)