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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?"
just ask an authority on this topic, and that of health in general, for that matter: Ray Kurzweil.
Calling sugar "toxic" is probably a plot to demean the word "toxic" and make tobacco less regulated.
Either that, or he's fallen for a more subtle form of the Dihydrogen Monoxide troll, perpetrated by the chemistry of sugar itself.
Fruits are loaded with sucrose, glucose, fructose, and dextrose.
Are you telling people not to eat fruit? or are you saying that crystallizing the sugars from it somehow makes sugar molecules poisonous?
MSG is just crystallized glutamate from seaweed. You get glutamate from lots of places.
All you're saying here is that people shouldn't eat food.
Now, if you want to modify it to say people shouldn't eat large quantities of something that they can only get in small quantities in nature, you might have a point. But otherwise you sound like a nutritional Chicken Little.
There is no need, and it would be unscientific, to introduce some magical theory of "processed" foods versus "natural"foods: if the chemistry is identical, the biology is identical. The lecture is well grounded in the science of biochemistry.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Oh please, tell me you have a source for that statement.
I just posted something similar, even more, water is really toxic without involving drowning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
protip: People are inherently addicted to stuff that their body can break down into ATP. This includes fats and sugars (including sucrose and high fructose corn syrup). We call that stuff "food".
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...
One of the most pervasive and powerful lobbies in Washington is the sugar lobby. They're worse than the oil companies going after climate research when it comes to attacking anyone who raises questions about their product.
They started the PR push back in advance of the story. Expect more in the days to come.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Basically your whole point rests upon "natural" vs. "processed" but can you even highlight how it is dangerous?
The problem seems to be, by far, quantity consumed rather than the nature of the material, unless you can present some compelling proof otherwise.
High blood sugar causes your body damage. It will destroy capillaries in your extremities and retinas, making you blind and gangrenous. Sounds pretty toxic to me.
Sugar is also necessary for the body to function. If you don't eat any, your body will make some. However, the amount actually required to function is very small. When blood sugar is kept at ideal levels, all is well and sugar is not killing you.
The problem is, people are eating way too much of it these days. Not just sugar, but starches that break down into sugar very quickly when eaten. This causes blood sugar spikes, provoking your metabolism to go into defense mode. That means a spike of insulin to control the blood sugar level quickly. However, this often overcompensates, leaving blood sugar low, which drives one to eat again, much sooner than is actually necessary. Plus, the excess sugar is stored as fat, and fat leads to insulin resistance over the long haul -- diabetes.
People need to eat more protein and fat, and choose carbohydrates that are absorbed into the system slowly. Keep the blood sugar on an even keel and you can break the cycle of endless hunger. You'll lose weight without having to diet, because you won't be driven to eat by the ping-ponging of your blood sugar level. And the fine structures of your body will sustain less damage from the blood sugar spikes, meaning you'll weather aging a lot better.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Just how many people posting replies here have actually, you know-- watched the hour long presentation created by Mr. Lustig all the way through?
In the presentation, Lustig lists the metabolic pathway that fructose (The sugar he rants about) has to go through in order to be processed by the body, and explains why it is toxic in the quantities that people eat it in.
What is drawing fire here, is that lustig rightly mentions that sucrose is just a glucose and a fructose bound together by an ether bond, and metabolically speaking is practically identical to HFCS. (Something the corn refiner's association is also quick to point out.)
The real point of the presentation is to point out that the US population is eating considerably more sugar than it was 50 years ago, with a more than 300% increase in fructose consumption specifically.
He advocates reduction of fructose consumption, based on several cited studies he lists in his viral video presentation.
That said, armchair nerd pundits like us have no place to try to debunk such claims, since as far as I know none of us are licensed dieticians or physicians. As such, throwing useless arguments like "Dihydrogen oxide poisoning" around are non-sequitors at best, and pointless mud slinging at worst.
Having seen the presentation, and seen that he cites dozens of studies that can be independently examined, (and therefor verified), I feel that his presentation is of higher quality than say, a certain celebrity's rants about immunity shots and autism are. As such, it deserves more meaty rebuttles than what I am reading here on slashdot.
All sugar is Organic. It's all made of long or short chains of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Sucrose C12H22O11
Glucose C6H12O6
Fructose C6H12O6
Lactose C12H22O11
Galactose C6H12O6
Maltose C12H22O11
Can't see anything non Organic.
take an apple, 50 calories sugar, 2 g fiber. Healthy food. Horrible fruit stipes, almost twice calories of an apple, less than half he fiber, and can be eaten endlessly.
A few bottles of coke, or fruit punch, several fuit strip snacks, basically what people think is an ok diet, and one has 2000 calories with no nutrition, and hundreds of grams of refined and concentrated sugar, much more than is healthy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There is no Magic. The amount of sugar, be it sucrose, fructose or glucose of dextrose in the average North American Diet is a major problem, but processed of not; fructose is fructose, sucrose is sucrose etc, the chemical does not change, nor does your bodies reaction to it.
Don't forget the fiber. The rare times I drink sugar, it is something like orange juice with extra pulp. I'm not sure what it does for sugar absorption, but I do know two things. The insoluable fiber keeps me regular. Second, the soluable fiber will bond with the carbohydrates in the juice, so the cholesterol in the food I'm eating at the same time cannot do the same and enter my bloodstream.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
There is research to indicate that sugar induced hyperactivity doesn't exist. You most likely get a "sugar high" because you think you'll get a "sugar high" or perhaps an allergy to lemons.
http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=241
Taubes claim is that obese individuals don't consume excess calories or more calories than lean individuals, but that the percentage of carb intake is higher and that the source of calories causes fat gain. His primary support for this is studies using self-reported calorie intakes, which is utterly useless since people will typically under-estimate their calorie intake by 20-60% http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7985624 , http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10745278 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9312790 combined with vastly over-estimating their energy expenditure: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21178922 Taubes' theory requires that there are magic insulin fairies that come in the night and add fat mass to innocent overweight and obese individuals who accidentally had some carbs. The alternative hypothesis - that people lie to themselves and don't know how much food they actually need or what's in the stuff they're eating is much simpler, neh?
A drug is "Articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals."
Sugar is a food as foods are "Any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body."
Indeed it does provide nutritional support for the body, in the form of energy. What's more you find sugar is essential to the function of a body. Glucose is a cell's primary energy storage and metabolic intermediate. Without it, your body does not function.
So sorry, it isn't a drug. Attempting to redefine it doesn't change that and is rather silly. That people eat too much of it is not relevant. Call it a drug because people east too much and you end up calling all foods drugs since people eat too much of all foods, fats, proteins, etc.
Bad press.
People are addicted to food. The withdrawal symptoms are worse than for any other drug.
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.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Where to begin. We can start with the first word of your post. "Lusting" is an activity I enjoy with redheads. Lustig is a scientist.
Secondly, Aragon makes a claim that Lustig doesn't nor does the article if you manage past the first few words. HFCS and sugar are equivalent nutritionally and they're both bad. Fructose is metabolized differently however (Aragon apparently can't read as well and decided to go the whole HFCS vs sucrose thing). Vis a vis the Japanese diet, he also tries to use anecdote (even when all of the posts he cites don't even support him!) and you'd do much better just to measure per capita sugar consumption (you know, sugar made minus sugar exported (or used for non-human consumption)) divided by number of people. This actual data (as cited in the TFA that you didn't read) supports the author's assertion, whereas using the plural of anecdote as data does not. (However, I would kill to have Japanese-style soft drink machines where literally one or two things actually contain sugar. You can't even find unsweetened tea in the states except at specialty stores for the most part.)
Lastly, Aragon plays the wonderful correlation/causality card. Which works for a great number of things, but unfortunately, scientists interesting in societal behavior can't just force people to adhere to their dietary whims randomly.
I'd like to see further research done in say, a controlled environment like a school where some bureaucrat can ban sugar from products the school sells and see if children become healthier. But bringing in thermodynamics to sound smart without the vaguely inclination of what you're even referring to is merely arrogant.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If the sugar lobby is so powerful, why is HFCS used in everything instead? Obviously they've got nothing on the corn lobbyists.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I can verify both sides of that story. I'm a 6'1" beanpole, a reasonably well-built beanpole, and I don't work out but I do walk regularly, and I was convinced fat people ate way more than me in order to be obese. Checkups show I'm not diabetic (or pre-diabetic), my bloods are fine, and liver/kidney function come out okay.
Then my first flatmare noticed the sheer amount of food I eat. She measured everything she saw me put in my mouth, and I consume anywhere from 6000-9000 calories a day. I eat four times what I should, but come out thin for it. It's not far of a stretch to realise that there are fat people do eat less than me (4000 calories a day should have people packing on weight and well on the way to obesity) or that there are lean people who absorb fewer nutrients than fat folk (which I do, too).
There's a lot more variation in human biology than many people give credit for.
are addicted to food. The withdrawal symptoms are worse than for any other drug.
Nah; oxygen addiction is far worse. The withdrawal symptoms include death within minutes. Most people can survive a lack of food for days.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Once again the slashdot summary is misleading. I urge everyone to see the referenced video and read the article afterwards. They are very informative. However, I should point out that the slashdot summary makes it look like the New York Times article is kind of dismissing Lustig's video. This is not true, the article is actually mostly supportive of Lustig's theories while providing much more historical information.
Given that glucose is what our bodies run on, I'd have to say no, sugar is NOT toxic to us. Is having too much sugar bad for you? Certainly. It's about balance. Too much of nearly anything (even water) is going to be bad for you.
You clearly didn't watch the lecture or have never taken biochemistry. Sugar - sucrose - is a disaccharide. Meaning a molecule of it is comprised of a glucose bonded to a fructose. In your digestive tract, it is broken down into its components - glucose and fructose. Glucose IS fine because every cell in your body utilizes glucose. Lustig stated that quite clearly and even showed evidence that people who consume starch filled foods (starch = long chains of glucose) do NOT get fat. The body doesn't tend to want to convert glucose into fat because it then has to convert it back to glucose - very inefficient. The body stores excess glucose in the liver as glycogen. And while you do need glucose to survive, you do NOT need to eat sugar (or even other carbohydrates) to get glucose. Your body is well equipped to make its own glucose.
Fructose is the problem because its biochemical pathway in the liver leads to fat, especially when you are already getting sufficient glucose, as you are when you eat sugar. In addition, there are other metabolic byproducts which result in inflammation, uric acid (possibly leading to gout), and super dense LDL's which are the actual cause of atherosclerosis (in heart disease). It also wrecks havoc on the normal functioning of the hormones in your body that regulate your hunger mechanisms (as well as regulation of body fat storage).
I'm getting the sense from reading many other comments that are similar to this one that most people don't have a good grasp of what "sugar" actually is. People, watch the lecture before you criticize the theory.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
No. The OP is exactly right. Elevated blood glucose levels are quite toxic to the body. Ask anyone with type-1 diabetes why their sense of taste is failing, and why they have to have an eyesight test for their driver's license more often than the rest of us.
In a healthy individual, insulin makes sure blood glucose doesn't stay too high for too long. This does not negate the fact that, while necessary, glucose does have the ability to seriously damage your body.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
As a scientist, I like to base my opinions on evidence wherever possible.
Lustig makes strong points which are backed up by studies (cited in his lecture) and are consistent with known biochemical pathways (which he explains).
The vast majority of responses here are complete bunkum: anecdotal evidence, true facts which sound like they are relevant ("you can drown in water!"), and misrepresentation of his central point ("our bodies *need* glucose! He's crazy!")
If you disagree with his position and have evidence to back that up, I'll listen to what you have to say.
Everyone else - you're going to get really frustrated when I don't change my opinion because of what you say.
Let's let evidence and logic have it's moment here.
And heroin is "just" purified and crystallized extract of a poppy plant.
Are you saying that just because something "just" comes from a plant that it's got to be good for you?
When you eat fruit, you're getting a lot more than "just" sugar. When you eat "just" sugar, you're not.
Tell you what, I'll eat a balanced diet and you live on high fructose corn syrup and water. Let's see if one is "just" the same as the other. Let's see just how "toxic" sugar can be.
You'll say, "well of course. Everyone should eat a balanced diet." But what's passing in the industrialized groceries of 2011 as a "balanced" diet is creating a society of people who are so fat that before middle age they have to drive around on little scooters just to fill their basket with foods that have a higher concentration of "just" sugar than any civilization that ever walked the earth. And there are entire sections of town where there are absolutely no places to buy produce or simple grains and staples. None. Yet McDonalds and other purveyors of industrial food are on every other corner in those same neighborhoods. How healthy do you think the people in those neighborhoods are going to be?
Of course sugar isn't "toxic". But in the concentrations that it's currently showing up on our grocery shelves it is a major contributor to most of the diseases that are killing people (the ones that are obesity-related).
You are welcome on my lawn.
So then I did this and you are correct there is little research in humans but of those few studies there are some that show more negative side effects than 'table sugar' and some that show the same effects as 'table sugar'. I did not see one that showed less negative side effects.
:)
Tests with rats may not be proof but they can be an indicator and are not 'unrelated'. Almost all research agrees that different sugars are different even if it's just that they are sweeter. More sweet per calorie may lead to a slower metabolic response to sweets as well as gorging on sweets according to some indicators (animal testing)
I know this is not the cause and effect proof you are looking for. So far there doesn't appear to be a large well controlled study involving humans. However, for me there are indications that HFCS may have more negative side effects than 'table sugar' and little in the way that it has less negative side effects.
Hopefully, you're free to consume whatever you want.
I've just now reviewed Alan Aragon's debunking of Lustig's claims, roundly publicized here in several comments. Including some of the cited references from that article.
Alan's rebuttal was a debate between himself and Lustig. The issues wander the landscape of unrelated factual errors (Lustig claims that the Japanese have no added fructose in their diet), cites of papers which show the data being inconclusive (specifically, he's citing absence of evidence as evidence of absence), and painting Lustig with the same brush as more "fringe" claimants.
And of course it wasn't the actual debate, but a summary of the debate, and written by Alan. He must have won the debate too - he says so in his summary.
In comparing the two positions, I find Alan's rebuttal lacking in scientific rigor. If a half-dozen or so studies can be found (or undertaken) which target Lustig's claims directly and show no evidence for the things that he says, that would counter the half-dozen or so studies that form the basis of Lustig's lecture.
Until then, I assign higher likelyhood to Lustig. I'll continue to hold this position until actual scientists chime in with conclusions based on evidence.
Forget all the junk food you mention. How about plain old bread? When I bake bread at home, the ingredients are flour, water, yeast. I might use a pinch of sugar to start the yeast (so it doesn't go into the bread as sugar). Why is it, then, that when I go to the grocery store, every loaf of sliced sandwich bread has been flavored with "a touch of honey" or "a hint of molasses" -- all of which, if you read the ingredients, means HFCS plus some flavorings? Who on Earth decided that we wouldn't eat bread unless it was sweet? And bear in mind, I'm shopping for whole wheat bread -- including all the varieties of nine-grain, oat encrusted bread you can muster -- which is supposedly "the healthy kind." The unhealthy kind? Turns out that when you do eat a Big Mac, some 1/3 of the calories are in the bun.
Breakfast served all day!
Why is everyone parroting the trope that "everything is toxic in large quantities" without asking whether the modern Western diet is above the threshold of excess? Isn't that what we're talking about here?
I feel like the libertarians in the crowd are trying to dismiss a valid question before it's answered.
Consider Richard Dawkins: He is very popular, and considered a good speaker. Why? Because he has one issue, and he's willing to talk about it all day long. This speaker, too, is sensationalist and myopic. But he is making well-justified points, backed up by good data, and so he's worth listening to. The criticisms and "debunking" of his work on the various blogs are not refuting his claims; rather, they are arguing that fructose is one of many contributors to obesity. If the worst criticism of the 90-minute video is that it's not broad enough, then it was a worthwhile video indeed.
All I can say is watch the video and then comment. I did, was more informative than most videos Ive seen lately, and poses an excellent argument on the possible cause of increased sugar leading to obesity. I think it is something worth seriously considering if you are overweight or have the health issues stated. In the last week since I saw it I cut out most processed sugars and am actually feeling better than I have in a long while.
Watch the video, decide for yourself. Will it kill you to cut down on HFCS or processed sugar? Not at all. And could it help? quite probably, so to me its worth a try.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
the toxicity of sugar (sucrose, glucose, fructose, etc) is one of things that almost no researcher in the know dares to mention publicly because it would be career (and funding) suicide. the processed food industry is far too powerful a lobby group.
but the researchers know. check medline. almost every research article on diabetes begins with words to the effect of "fed the rats sugar until they developed diabetes". feeding rats sugar is THE consistently reproducible method of inducing diabetes.
and this is what the processed food lobby is doing to consumers every day with sugar in absofuckinglutely everything. even things you think wouldn't have sugar because they're supposed to be salty or sour or savoury or anything-else-but-sweet have sugar in them. because it's cheap, it's addictive (esp. to children and adults with poor impulse control - i.e. most of the population), and it's a preservative.
sugar in our diet isn't bad when it's rare and unrefined (as it is in fruits and vegetables etc. and in our natural pre-agriculture diet it WAS rare, but it was a huge amount of easily absorbed energy which is why we evolved the ability to taste sweetness...and why we also evolved to *like* it). even when humans first discovered processed sugar from sugar cane a few hundred years ago it wasn't a huge problem because it was very expensive (like all spices were) - only the rich could afford it.
even the improvement of refinery processes that made sugar became extremely refined and extremely cheap wasn't that bad....it was only when "food" factories started putting it in *everything* so that it became almost impossible to avoid eating far too much of the stuff that it became a problem.
and this, btw, is also why the poor (and the time-poor) suffer from diabetes more than the rich do - the rich can afford to eat well. the poor can't (money-wise AND time-wise).
tldr;
Summary:
Instead of a spoonful of sugar in your coffee, put a potato.
Taube's article is pretty long. It's still much faster to read it than to watch Lustig's whole presentation. If you can, do both, of course. If you can't or won't WTFV, then RTFA. If you can't or won't RTFA, then here's a summary.
Yes, too much of anything is toxic. Duh. That's not what Lustig or Taube are talking about. They're also not talking about "empty calories" -- the consumption of lots of sugar without other nutrients, meaning your overall calorie intake is higher, so you get fat and have obesity-related problems.
What they're talking about is the question of whether fructose directly causes health problems of its own accord -- namely, things like fatty liver and insulin resistance, things which may in turn raise the risk of diabetes and cancer independent of whether you get fat.
What Taube will tell you, that Lustig won't, is that the research is not conclusive. It all shows very strong correlation, but that of course isn't causation. And that's caused all these disputes of what the real problem is, particularly whether it's fat or sugar that's responsible.
Taube says that we should be considering the possibility that it's both; or at least, abandoning the idea that it must be either-or. Similarly, on the question of whether it's sucrose or HFCS that's worse, he suggests that they're so similar (both are glucose-fructose mixtures in nearly equal proportions) that they're probably both just as bad as each other.
Too much of anything is toxic; but (Taube says) because the research is inconclusive, nobody can say how much fructose is "too much". It's an established fact that short-term, high-dose fructose intake causes these problems (fatty liver et al.), but it's not known what long-term intake at the levels currently typical in the US will do.
The circumstantial evidence suggests that it will cause the same problems, eventually. And of course various people (like Lustig) have seized on this circumstantial stuff as damning evidence. But just because they're overstating the case, doesn't mean they're wrong, says Taube.
Given that glucose is what our bodies run on, I'd have to say no, sugar is NOT toxic to us. Is having too much sugar bad for you? Certainly. It's about balance. Too much of nearly anything (even water) is going to be bad for you.
Glucose is one of the things our bodies run on. We can also run on ketones. And there is some evidence (controversial, of course) that our bodies run better on ketones than on glucose.
But just because our bodies run on it does not mean that it is non-toxic. There's a reason why unregulated blood sugar (diabetes) is considered a bad thing. High blood sugar causes damaged to capillaries and your retinas, causes neuropathy, all kinds of fun stuff. And we aren't even talking about hitting the LD50 of glucose.
The fact of the matter is that much of our dietary recommendations, like the food pyramid, are not based on good science. Sure, if you take in more calories than you burn you're going to gain weight... But that's an overly simplistic statement. It really depends on what kind of calories you take in, and how the body metabolizes them. There's no link between dietary fat and body fat (beyond the fact that dietary fat is generally calorically dense) - but we're told that low-fat is good. We're told to eat lots of grains and carbohydrates of various types... We start seeing all kinds of nutritionally fortified foods... We start sticking NuVal tags on everything in the supermarket... And obesity skyrockets. And dieticians are still telling folks to avoid fat and have a bowl of cereal instead.
We consume far more sugar in our daily diet than we were ever intended to. Not just glucose, but absolute craptons of fructose. And, whether the corn lobby likes it or not, fructose is not processed the same way glucose is. We consume craptons of starches, too... Dry cereals, various chips and crackers, pasta, potatoes, breads, corn in every form imaginable... All that starch gets converted into sugar eventually.
We'd really be much better off eating more natural fats like nuts, butter, and not-so-lean meat. We'd really be much better off eating more protein from meats, nuts, and beans. We'd really be much better off eating more vegetables. And we'd be a hell of a lot better off if so much of our food didn't come from a box or a freezer or a restaurant.
But industrial agriculture is a huge business... And you've got to do something with all that corn your grow... So we get lobbyists in Washington, and we get recommendations based on bad science, and we get inundated with commercials telling us how much better our lives will be if we just microwave something instead of spending hours in the kitchen... And then folks look amazed at our national epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde