It’s no accident that per person, Americans eat, on average, more than 150 pounds of added sugar in their food every year. The sugar industry has expended considerable effort to sneak it into, and keep it in, as many processed foods as possible.
Consider the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s there was a move afoot by dental health experts to advocate a reduction of sugar in the American diet because it was linked to dental cavities.
The sugar industry squelched it.
Documents discovered and analyzed by researchers at the University of California San Francisco show that sugar companies collaborated with the National Institutes of Health to detour anti-sugar efforts into a federally-funded research program that centered on ways to fight tooth decay that didn’t include decreasing sugar consumption.
“The dental community has always known that preventing tooth decay required restricting sugar intake,” says researcher Cristin Kearns, who discovered the archived documents. “It was disappointing to learn that the policies we are debating today could have been addressed more than forty years ago.”
Today, tooth decay is still the most prevalent chronic health problem affecting U.S. children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that about 50 percent of American children and teenagers have cavities in their adult teeth. They estimate that more than 15 percent of kids age 6 to 19 have decaying teeth that are not being treated. That leads to loss of teeth, abscesses and infections.
“Our findings are a wake-up call for government officials charged with protecting the public health, as well as public health advocates, to understand that the sugar industry, like the tobacco industry, seeks to protect profits over public health,” says researcher Stanton A.Glantz.
Of course, aside from leading to tooth decay, sugar is linked to a long list of other health issues.
“There is robust evidence now linking excess sugar consumption with heart disease, diabetes and liver disease, in addition to tooth decay,” says researcher Laura Schmidt.
Of course, avoiding processed foods is a good start if you want to cut down on added sugar. But today, there are quite a few alternatives to the old fashioned white stuff that taste great and don’t affect your health.
In fact one alternative sugar called erythritol might be something to consider. It’s a “sugar alcohol,” which means it’s a sugar made from plants and starches. You can try stevia, but it has a bit of an aftertaste that many people don’t like.
Erythritol is 70% as sweet as sugar, but with no calories and no other taste. It also doesn’t get broken down and absorbed by the body. [1] Almost all of it is excreted in urine, so it has little effect on your body except satisfying our taste for sweets.
It is showing up in some “low-calorie” foods, but for use at home, look for it at your local health food store. Companies like Swanson and Now foods make erythritol powder.
[1] Arrigonia E, Brounsa F, Amadòa R. “Human gut microbiota does not ferment erythritol.” British Journal of Nutrition 2005; Volume 94, Issue 05, pp 643-646.
