After an X-ray, dental surgeon, that will be six teeth I will be taking out.
Was it six, to be honest, I lost count?
He reassured me he had taken out thousands of teeth (or was it tens of thousands) all around the world (and he was was a Lt Col), but I am not sure that was reassurance or not.
Why, I look after my teeth?
Sugar.
But I avoid sugar,
The damage was done years ago, in your teens.
Sadly all too true, my grandmother used to stuff us full of sweets.
As the dental surgeon said, people did not know what we know now, for my grandmother, it was an act of kindness.
But what is the excuse today? There is no excuse today for parents giving their children sweets, taking them to McDonald’s, giving them Coke and other sweetened fizzy drinks. Any parent that does, is engaging in child abuse.
A can of Coke, I cannot remember the figures, but at least ten spoons of sugar, maybe more. Would anyone put ten spoons of sugar in a drink? Can you imagine heaping ten spoons of sugar in a cup of tea.
Diet Coke does not let you off the hook either. it is fizzed with CO2, a carbonated drink (in essence Coke is nothing more than syrupy fizzy water). The CO2 makes it acidic, and that eats into your teeth.
So nothing for it, grin and bear it, half a dozen teeth to be extracted, except I will longer be able to grin.
How will I be able to eat?
Don’t worry, you will manage.
Sugar kills teeth.
It is not only teeth, we are in an obesity epidemic, type 2 diabetes hitting kids in their late teens, early twenties. It used to be known as late onset middle age diabetes.
Why no sugar tax, why no government action?
Because we have an extremely powerful food lobby, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Cadbury’s, and he who pays the piper calls the tune
In the entrance to the hospital, a little café, junk food, sugary cakes. In the corridor, a widescreen TV, information on healthy eating, avoid sugar, excess alcohol, only too fast to read. Opposite the information display, a vending machine dispensing Coke.
Complex sugars like sucrose can be broken down into simpler sugars, glucose and fructose.
If fructose comes from fruit, then it must be natural. If it is natural then it must be good for us.
That is what the food industry would like us to believe.
I was in Holland & Barrett, a health food store, at least that is what they would like us to think.
At the back of the store boxes of pure fructose. I was reminded of boxes of washing powder. It would probably be safer to eat washing powder, certainly safer to eat the box.
Why not simply serve the customers rat poison? The end result will be the same.
Fructose is deadly!
No child wants to be obese. No child gets up in the morning and shouts Mam, I want to be fat. No child wants to be bullied at school for being overweight.
Why then do parents abuse their children by taking them to the local McVomit, stuff them with sugary treats, give them Coke to drink?
We have an epidemic of childhood obesity, we have kids with type 2 diabetes a disease of late middle age. We have an epidemic of obesity in 6-month old babies!
It may surprise most people to learn that children do not exercise less than they used to. Children do not become fat because they exercise less. They exercise less because they are fat.
We are eating more. Gluttony.
This is a biochemical and psychological problem.
McDonald’s showed in the 1970s, if you give people bigger portions they eat more, and there appears to be no limit. Supersize everything, the food is cheap, the profits go up, but so does the calorie intake.
The calorie intake is in the carbohydrates, the sugars, not the fats.
We are eating more, but what we are eating more of is calorie dense, thus we are hit with a double whammy.
High Fructose Corn Syrup. Obtained from maize. Advantage to the drinks industry is that it is cheap. They switched from sucrose to HFCS. The net result that in the US is 63 pound per person.
Fructose is sweeter. If we give sucrose a base index of 100. On the same measure HFCS 120, fructose 173
We are increasing our total food intake, we are increasing the amount of sugar.
Agricultural policy is that food should be cheap. But cheap food comes at a high cost, high environmental cost, animal welfare, junk food.
High Fructose Corn Syrup. Cheap so replaces sucrose. But gets in everywhere because it is cheap.
Fruit juices are problematic. Healthy yes, but high in sugar, or can be.
Grams of sugar per 100ml
pomegranate juice 12.4
red grape and raspberry juice 11.5
orange juice 10.0
coconut water 4.8
Pomegranate juice is known to be high in sugar, that is why the advice is no more than one glass a day.
An athlete after a burst of activity will have burnt down the energy store held in the liver. High energy or sports drinks are designed to replenish the depleted energy levels in the liver. Do we see elite athletes drinking these drinks? No. We see fat kids drinking them because they have been brainwashed into thinking it is cool.
A legacy of the London 2012 Olympics is that more people will get more exercise. Sheer and utter nonsense. Sat watching the Olympics on TV does not incline one to get up and be active.
Two of the sponsors of the London 2012 Olympics are McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. What message does that send?
Eat less fat. Junk low fat foods are high in sugar.
In the home, food from fresh ingredients, we can control what we eat.
With processed food, cut the fat and it tastes crap, so replace the fat with sugar. Low fat processed food is high in sugar, which usually means high in High Fructose Corn Syrup
Fructose suppresses the signals to the brain that says I am no longer hungry. Thus if a kid drinks a can of coke in a fast food restaurant, a huge intake of calories, far from feeling satiated and having no appetite, can actually eat more.
A can or bottle of coke is a syrup. Caffeine is a stimulant, it is also a diuretic, meaning we urinate more. This leads to loss of fluid, we feel thirsty and drink more. Also contains salt, the sugar masks the salt. The salt makes us thirsty, we drink more.
Fructose and glucose are simple sugars, but they are not the same. They have different physical structures, they are metabolised in different ways.
The boxes of fructose in Holland & Barrett are labelled fruit sugar. The side panel states it is a natural sugar and advises use to replace sucrose!
Sucrose is 50:50 fructose and glucose.
With my knowledge of plants I can quite easily concoct a delicious but deadly meal.
Jacques Peretti investigates how the concept of ‘supersizing’ changed our eating habits forever. How did we – once a nation of moderate eaters – start to want more?
Speaking to Mike Donahue, former McDonalds Vice President, Peretti explores the history behind the idea of supersizing. 40 years ago, McDonalds hired David Wallerstein, a former cinema manager who had introduced the idea of selling larger popcorn servings in his Chicago cinema. Wallerstein realised that people would eat more but they didn’t like the idea of appearing gluttonous by going back for seconds. By increasing the portion sizes and the cost, he could sell more food. In 1972, he introduced the idea to McDonalds and their first large fries went on sale.
By the 1980s, we were eating more – and eating more often. Perretti speaks with industry professionals to examine the story behind the introduction of value meals, king-size snacks and multi-buy promotions. How did the advertising industry encourage us to eat more often?
The programme also explores the developments in dietary advice – by 2003, the Chief Medical Officer was warning of an ‘obesity time bomb.’ Peretti speaks to obesity expert Professor Philip James, who made recommendations in his 1996 report that the food industry should cease targeting children in their advertisements. He also speaks with Professor Terry Wilkin, who led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain; and former Labour MP David Hinchliffe, who chaired the 2003 Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.
Disgraceful behaviour of Tessa Jowell who shelved a report on obesity.
Contrary to myth, children do not exercise less. They are not getting fat because they exercise less, they exercise less because they are getting fat. Funding for this study blocked.
Richard Doll exposed the link btween smoking and lung cancer. There was then a long battle with the tobacco cindustry who denied there was any link, but as we learnt when class action was taken, they were well aware.
That is the position we are now in with the food industry. An industry that is as damaging to health as was the tobacco industry, an industry that is spending vast sums on lobbying.
Note: Due to the extended Wimbledon coverage, the third and final episode of The Men Who Made Us Fat has been rescheduled for 9pm Thursday 12 July 2012 on BBC 2.
Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now.
Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don’t know when to stop.
Endocrinologist Robert Lustig was one of the first to recognise the dangers of HFCS but his findings were discredited at the time. Meanwhile a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of ‘low fat’, ‘heart healthy’ products in which the fat was removed – but the substitute was yet more sugar.
Meanwhile, in 1970s Britain, food manufacturers used advertising campaigns to promote the idea of snacking between meals. Outside the home, fast food chains offered clean, bright premises with tempting burgers cooked and served with a very un-British zeal and efficiency. Twenty years after the arrival of McDonalds, the number of fast food outlets in Britain had quadrupled.
McD’s press button to open the door, less exercise
It is the parents who have to take responsibility for what their children eat. — McDonald’s
As a company over many years, we have promoted a healthy active lifestyle. — McDonald’s
Why needlessly expend energy on opening a door?
Why waste that investment in saturated fat?
McDonald’s is here to help you,
McDonald’s is here to help safeguard your careful investment in saturated fat.
McDonald’s has installed a button to open the door. No longer do you need to needlessly expend energy. No longer do you need to worry about that careful investment in saturated fat.
You can always rely on McDonald’s to help safeguard your investment in saturated fat.
In the 1970s, less than 2% of adults in UK were obese.
Obesity has trebled in the UK since the 1980s.
By the mid-90s, more than one in ten children in the UK were obese.
Children are developing type-2 diabetes, a disease of late middle age (it used to be known as maturity onset diabetes).
60% of adults in the UK are overweight or obese.
Obesity is costing the NHS over £4 billion a year.
Annual health bill in the US for obesity approaching $150 billion.
In the US, one-third of the population is clinically obese.
It is not only saturated fat that is the problem, sugar is too.
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