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Sugar, Sugar
But profits are sweeter
There’s a rather nasty epidemic affecting Asia and Canada that is threatening
to become a very nasty
pandemic threatening the entire world. Unfortunately, it got its start in a
country governed by a dishonest,
paranoid, and secretive regime. For once, I’m not talking about the Putsch
junta: this is China.
The entity most responsible for fighting the spread of this virus, and for
forcing the paranoid
bureaucrats of the Beijing regime to give an honest accounting of the course of
SARS in their country, has been
the World Health Organization (WHO), the health branch of the UN. WHO is the
international version of the
Centers for Disease Control in America, and like the CDC, WHO tracks contagious
diseases, coordinates research
to find ways of preventing the spread, and proposes measures to prevent such
contagions in the first place.
It’s impossible to guess how many lives they’ve saved over the past 55 years,
but tens of millions is probably
a conservative guess.
When China lied to the world about SARS, it was WHO that called them on it – had
the knowledge to be
ABLE to call them on it – and has gradually been getting a more accurate picture
to help the rest of the world
prepare for what might be a very serious problem.
WHO coordinated research efforts among the French, Canadians, and Germans, and
identified the
coronavirus that caused the disease and mapped its genome in the amazing period
of just a few weeks. WHO has
been exemplary in raising concern while assuaging panic. They have been real
heroes over the past three
months, from the time they first became aware that there was something going on
in China.
Enter the sugar industry. Lobbyists for American sugar and soft drink
manufacturers are approaching
Congress with a request.
They want Congress to cut funding for WHO, thus destroying it.
It doesn’t matter how many times you blink at that sentence – it’s not going to
change. They want to
destroy WHO.
The reason for this is that WHO, which has to do, as part of its mission,
studies on nutritional health,
is issuing a new report containing guidelines for good diet today, and in the
report, they recommend that a
healthy diet consist of no more than 10% sugar.
The folks who make lots of money selling you sugared foods and soft drinks beg
to differ. They think a
rich and satisfying diet should consist of about, ohhh, twenty five percent
sugar. They probably also think
that any mouth with more than ten teeth in it is just a waste of enamel, too.
They’ve already launched a barrage of propaganda against the report, of a
viciousness and dishonesty
that the tobacco industry could only dream of. Defying nearly every legitimate
nutritionist in the world, they
condemned WHO for “misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the
health and well-being of
Americans, much less the rest of the world” and swore to “exercise
every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of this report. The sugar
salesmen wish to avoid the
effort of such intense lobbying in the future by requiring “future WHO funding
to be provided only if the
organization accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of
science." If that noise
sounds vaguely familiar, it’s the same demands that the tobacco, timber, and
anti-science religious whack
industries have been screeching for years.
The sugar industry claims that a report by the Institute of Medicine backs their
claim that healthy
diets should consist of 25% sugar. But Harvey Fineberg, Institute president of
the Institute, warned that the
report was being misinterpreted. He says it does not make a recommendation on
sugar intake. Ooops.
Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola have been vigorously fighting another report that
indicates that in developing
countries where the soft drinks are getting widespread acceptance, nutritionists
are seeing more and more kids
who suffer simultaneously from malnutrition and obesity. What swell guys they
are!
There’s a chance of course that our once-proud Congress, now a motley collection
of begging whores
sleazing from corporation to corporation for the next campaign donation and a
fat corporate job after they
leave public office, will go along with this.
If that happens, it will mark yet a further low point in America’s rapid
descent.
Medical people have little use for sugar. It’s empty calories that don’t benefit
the body at all.
Further, it destroys teeth, and yanks blood sugar levels all over the place,
thus promoting diabetes. Most
doctors will recommend eliminating sucrose from the diet altogether, and the
late Doctor Atkins took it a step
further, recommending elimination of all fruit in the first stages of his diet,
thus eliminating fructose as
well as sucrose, and only reintroducing small amounts of fructose in later
stages of the diet. He saw no
reason for a person to ever eat any refined sugar ever again.
Even the soft drink people have been trying to get away from sugar. Aspartame (Nutrasweet)
was supposed
to be the saving replacement, but aspartame comes with a wide variety of side
effects, including obesity (it
somehow spikes blood sugar, increasing appetite, which sorta defeats the
purpose), liver and kidney problems,
migraines, depression, and even neurological problems.
Cyclamates were associated with bladder cancer in laboratory rats, but skeptics
outside the sugar
industry noted that had the rats been fed equivalent amounts of sugar, they
would have all died from obesity
and diabetes. Incidently, after thirty years of use in Canada, no elevated
instance of bladder cancer has been
found in humans, not even in Quebec.
The latest artificial sweetener is sucralose, which is sugar molecules with a
chlorine molecule added.
While, like its predecessors, it’s not perfect (there are reports of lab animal
subjects getting shrunken
thymus glands (up to 40%) and enlarged liver and kidneys), it has zero calories,
doesn’t rot the teeth, and
doesn’t jigger the blood sugar levels. Conditionally, it looks a lot more
promising than aspartame at this
point.
It has been authorized for sale in the US, and is available on the shelves under
the brand name of
“Splenda.” It has a huge advantage over cyclamates or aspartame in that it is
stable in heat and oxygen, and
is thus ideal for cooking and can mix with acidic and carbonated beverages quite
well.
Another sweetener is Stevia, which a Canadian nutritional page describes as
follows: “This is a non-
caloric, zero-carb natural sweetener, derived from a South American plant stevia
rebaudiana, and has been in
wide use in Asia for some years now. It's becoming more readily available in
North America; look for it in
health food and natural food stores. So far, it appears to be well-tolerated,
with no reports of negative
effects. It is available as a liquid extract - either concentrated or dilute, a
white crystalline powder made
from the extract or simply the powdered green herb leaf. It provides an intense
sweet taste, which has the
potential to be bitter. Some people find it has a slight anise/licorice flavor
which may or may not be
objectionable. Also, some studies suggest that it may possibly stimulate the
release of insulin; in Protein
Power Lifeplan, the Eades' recommend using stevia with caution. It is stable in
heat, so is fine to use in
cooking..”
[Source: http://www.lowcarb.ca/tips/tips006.html]
The same entities that are trying to punish the World Health Organization for
merely suggesting that
people limit their intake of sugar are the very same ones who are frantically
seeking replacements for sugar.
Pepsico and Coke are in a race to get sucralose-sweetened sodas on the market
first.
They know the destructive effect sugar is having on people, and like the tobacco
industry before them,
they are trying to do everything they can to prevent it all from caving in on
them.
But trying to destroy WHO as a punishment for saying the same thing that most
family doctors said for
years is insane. If they press this, they should be held criminally and civilly
liable, and any Congressman
who supports such a vicious, hare-brained destructive notion should be targeted
for defeat for deliberately
attempting to injure the American people.
WHO has saved tens of millions of lives. Sugar has destroyed tens of millions of
lives.
Try to figure out what the right move is, Congress. And for once, don’t let
psychotic thieves like the
sugar companies own your consciences.
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