Brazil approves world's first gmo sugar cane

It doesn't matter if the sugar cane is GMO or not, if they spray it with glyphosate it will end up in our food. Glyphosate is sprayed on the leaves, and taken up by all of the plant. It cannot be washed off. Sugar cane is used in LOTS of foods that need a sweetener. Glyphosate is also used to kill a whole crop all at once to increase crop yields, whether the crop is Roundup Ready or not.

Source
Reuters.

Philadelphia passes sugary drink tax

Philadelphia recently passed the sugary drink tax which adds 1.5 cents to every ounce of a sugary drink, but this raises a lot of questions.

1. How many computer systems will need to be updated to track the size of each and every drink? 
2. Does this count coffee drinks, which are also loaded with sugar? 
3. Does this count frozen drinks like slurpees? 
4. Does this count sweet tea? It also has a lot of sugar. 
5. Does it count sports drinks, energy drinks? They also have lots of sugar. 

For a 32oz Big Gulp the sugar tax (excluding sales tax) is 48 cents. Berkeley, CA was the first to pass a sugary drink tax. I can see many industries pushing back against this.

Source
Organic Consumers.

Sugar: More on why it's bad for you

This letter from Harvard says too much fructose is bad for you because it makes fatty deposits in the liver. The liver takes sugar and converts it to fat. There are some images of a healthy liver, and fatty liver there. Some excerpts:

1. Refined sugar, called sucrose, is half glucose and half fructose. High-fructose corn syrup is about 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
2. Virtually unknown before 1980, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease now affects up to 30% of adults in the United States and other developed countries, and between 70% and 90% of those who are obese or who have diabetes.

This 2015 WHO report (PDF) says to limit calories from sugar to 10%.

And there's this post where a company in Australia says sugar is good for you, because they made a low glycemic index sugar: sucrose.

And another post from Harvard from 2014: "Too much sugar causes heart disease".

Take a look at this video of a presentation "Sugar: The Bitter Truth". It's 1.5 hours long but very interesting. A PDF of the slides is here.

High-sugar diet alters gut microbiota for the worse

Another way sugar is bad for you.

From LA Times:

A report published in the new journal Science Translational Medicine has made an interesting discovery concerning the relationship between sugar intake and the balance of intestinal flora. Researchers have discovered that a diet high in sugar and fat substantially alters the bacterial composition in the gut, making it difficult to maintain a healthy weight.

From NIH 2014 "Obesity as a Consequence of Gut Bacteria and Diet Interactions":

At the experimental level, analysis of fecal samples revealed a potential link between obesity and alterations in the gut flora (drop in Bacteroidetes and increase in Firmicutes), the specific gut microbiome being associated with the obese phenotype. The sparse data in humans supports the fact that fat storage is favoured by the presence of the gut microbiota, through a multifaceted mechanism.

It results from a long-term disbalance between energy intake and expenditure, that is, increased consumption of more energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods containing high levels of sugar and saturated fats in combination with reduced physical activity. Obesity is now characterized by a cluster of important chronic metabolic disorders, including insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia, and by a low grade of systemic inflammation [3], being the cause of exacerbation of all the above and leading to increased morbidity and mortality.

There's a lot of good studies referenced there, you might want to read the NIH study.

A bit about stevia

A bit of history:

1. Stevia is an extract from a plant which is used as a sweetener. It is indigenous to the Amambay Mountain region.
2. The Guarani Indians of South America have used stevia for centuries as a sweetener. 
3. The use of stevia was recorded in Spanish historical documents in the archives of Paraguay in Asuncion. 
4. About 1900 Dr. Moises Santiago Bertoni, director of the College of Agriculture in Asuncion, wrote of stevia: " A fragment of the leaf only a few square millimeters in size suffices to keep the mouth sweet for an hour;..."
5. In 1931, two chemists in France isolated the sweet compound, and called it stevioside but a US Dr.  Hewitt G. Fletcher found it had no use. (Which I find odd since sugar was still expensive about this time.)
6. In the 1960s the Japanese strictly regulated or outright banned artificial sweeteners, and discovered stevia to be the best substitute.  
7. By 2010 I started seeing stevia available in the US.

Source: Stevia.net

1. Stevia leaves have about 12% level of sweetener. Refined stevioside is about 81-90% sweetener. 
2. Stevia, though it's from the tropics, is adaptable, and can be grown from southern Canada down to Floria. 
3. Stevia does best in rich, loamy soil. 
4. Stevia feeder roots tend to be near the surface of the ground, so it's best to use mulch to protect them.  
5. There are several companies that will ship you live plants. See http://www.stevia.net/growingstevia.htm#sources. 
6. Plants are susceptible to cold during their young stage, so consider it a warm weather plant. Roots can also be susceptible to excess moisture, so make sure the soil is well-drained.

Sugar substitutes can promote glucose intolerance, imbalance gut flora

From The Scientist:

Non-caloric sweeteners can spur glucose intolerance in mice and some people, according to a study published today (September 17) in Nature. Researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and their colleagues have uncovered “the unexpected effect that artificial sweeteners drive changes in the [gut] microbiota, which promote glucose intolerance,” said University of Chicago pathologist Cathryn Nagler, who studies how the microbiota regulate allergic responses to food and penned an editorial accompanying the study.

From the USDA via a 2014 Colorado State University study:

Obesity rates among children in the United States have tripled in the past three decades and approximately one third of all children or adolescents are currently overweight or obese (CDC). Obese children are more likely to be pre-diabetics and have one or more risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, problems that become exacerbated as they enter adulthood. To combat weight gain and obesity related disease a number of low energy foods, usually containing non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) such as saccharine, sucralose, and aspartame have become increasingly prevalent and are recommended sugar substitutes for individuals with Type 2 diabetes. However, two recent human observational studies found positive correlations between consumption of artificial sweeteners, particularly diet sodas, with increased obesity and metabolic syndrome.Weight gain is thought to occur when energy intake surpasses energy expenditure; and foods sweetened with NNS's are designed to reduce caloric consumption while enhancing the flavor of many foods. However, new insights into the role of intestinal flora in harvesting energy from the diet and in contributing to both increased appetite and insulin resistance suggest that the "energy in/energy out" equation may be oversimplified. In particular, several studies support that the relative proportion of the two major intestinal bacterial phyla, Firmicutes and Bacteriodetes, affect the harvest of calories from the diet. Therefore, if NNS alter the intestinal flora such that there are proportionately higher levels of Firmicutes, foods that would normally have passed undigested from the body are metabolized and absorbed through the intestines, increasing the total calories available to the host. We hypothesize that consumption of NNS may later the intestinal microflora to favor greater dietary energy harvest and/or increased inflammation associated with obesity and this study is designed to explore this hypothesis.  

Be careful of artificial sweeteners. Try stevia instead. The Japanese have been using it since the 1970s and the Guarani indians from South America used it long before that.

Ways to fight inflammation

From Arthritis.org: 

Cut salt
Cut sugar
Alcohol in moderation

Paper: The effects of diet on inflammation

Reducing the incidence of coronary heart disease with diet is possible. The main dietary strategies include

1. Adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acides
2. Reduce saturated and trans fats
3. Eat more fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains. 
4. Eat less processed grains. 

Each of these strategies may be associated with lower generation of inflammation. This review examines the epidemiologic and clinical evidence concerning diet and inflammation. Dietary patterns high in refined starches, sugar, and saturated and trans-fatty acids, poor in natural antioxidants and fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and poor in omega-3 fatty acids may cause an activation of the innate immune system, most likely by an excessive production of proinflammatory cytokines associated with a reduced production of anti-inflammatory cytokines. The whole diet approach seems particularly promising to reduce the inflammation associated with the metabolic syndrome. The choice of healthy sources of carbohydrate, fat, and protein, associated with regular physical activity and avoidance of smoking, is critical to fighting the war against chronic disease.

 I.e. eat less processed food, more natural food.

Weight gain and sugar-sweetened beverages. Is there a link between sugar and weight gain? This paper looks at past studies for patterns. Full text is free, no account required.

US congress considers updating food labels with added sugar content

(In order to understand the whole issue one needs to know the history of the issue, and a pattern of contempt of health, and massive negligence of the food industries. In this article from 2014, Campbell's opposes adding the added sugar amount to the label.)


In Washington, a pivotal battle over sugar is heating up. One small corner of the wider culture war over public health and sweeteners, this fight isn't about how much sugar should be in your food, but how much you should know about it.

U.S. food regulators say the public needs to know how much sugar manufacturers add to their products, beyond the sweetener that naturally occurs in the raw ingredients. Companies such as Campbell Soup Company oppose the addition. While the company says it supports better food labels, it warns that making a distinction in the source of sugar risks dangerous confusion.


From Feb 2014.

News: Mom sues over misleading product names

A San Diego mother is suing cereal companies, saying "misleading" marketing on "low-sugar" cereals mistakenly led her to believe she was giving her kids healthier breakfasts.

"It's deceiving," Jennifer Hardee said in an interview today on ABC News' "Good Morning America." "Parents think they're buying something healthier for their children, [only] to find out that they're not."

The low-sugar versions of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops, General Mills' Cocoa Puffs and Trix, and Post's Fruity Pebbles, have the same amount of calories, carbohydrates, fat, fiber and other nutrients as the regular versions of the cereals, according to a recent report by The Associated Press.

Read more here.

More info on sugar

Here's a quick look at the percent of sugar that many "healthy" foods have. Notice that a bbq sauce is composed of more sugar than ice cream!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wbLdODNGIvr_uHURTdICfemtMVliQloapK0Q5itvCOo/edit?usp=sharing

Here's a website that shows you how much sugar is in many US foods. http://www.fooducate.com/

They also have an app that you can use on the iPhone and Android. The Android app is available at http://play.google.com. I have been unable to find out if there is a cost for the app, but many foods one things are healthy, are really not. Check labels carefully.

Another quick way to judge the sugar content is look at the first 4 ingredients. Ingredients in the US are listed from most (by weight) to least. The first 4 ingredients will compose most of the product. If one or more of the first 4 ingredients is a form of sugar (glucose, fructose, sucrose, corn syrup, cane sugar, beet sugar, etc) then it's probably not good for you. Again, check labels carefully. Food companies in the US have fought heavily against any more truth in labeling when it concerns sugar or GMOs.

US public schools replacing soda machines with machines dispensing "juice" does not help the problem at all. The "juice" contains lots of added sugar, just as much as the soda.

How sugar affects your immune system, causation vs correlation

This page has a nice graphic that explains how sugar reduces the efficiency of your immune system.

http://alternativehealthatlanta.com/immune-system/sugar-and-your-immune-system/

When reading any piece of information, like a web page or a study, it's important to note the difference between correlation and causation. Years ago there was a big flap about aluminum possibly causing Alzheimer's disease. What the study said: "Aluminum found in x% of dead Alzheimer patient brains." What the journalist wrote: "ZOMG! Aluminum causes Alzheimer's!!!"

Americans panicked, people looked for deodorants without aluminum, and replaced their aluminum cooking pots and pans with something else.  These are the people who do not understand correlation vs causation. And the deodorant and pan companies made money off of them.

First of all, if someone uses "ZOMG" they are probably under the age of 16. Second, if a person uses more than one exclamation point in a paragraph, it's safe to assume they are over reactive, or trying to sell you something you don't need. In either of these cases you cannot trust the source.

There was some correlation between aluminum in dead brains and Alzheimer patients, but causation is much harder to prove, and causation was not proven in this case. Another possible correlation was 100% of the dead Alzheimer patients brains contained dihydrogen monoxide, a deadly chemical known to almost everyone. But this is correlation, not causation. No one showed that water killed these people. There was no cause and effect proven.

Here's another example. If you hold your hand over a lit candle flame, you will eventually get burned. Now that's a working theory at this point, but I think science has proven pretty well many times that excessive heat causes burns on human tissue. So it's a pretty good bet we have proven causation.

-----

"It takes only about 2 tablespoons of sugar to weaken the immune system by up to 92%."

Source: http://www.heathscience.org/sugar-research

Now look closely at that statement, which says "up to 92%". That's the worst case scenario, not the average case. Still, sugar is pretty bad. Most people eat too much, that's a big reason it's bad.