By Carmen Blum – OPINION –
Almost anyone who has taken an eighth grade health class in America has heard the numbers collected by Harvard Medical School. 70%. The percentage of American adults who are obese or overweight. 57, 638. The number of children our own age who are afflicted with type two diabetes when 30 years ago that number was zero. The incidence of diabetes and related diseases are at an all time high in history. However over the last 30 years there has been an exponential increase in the craze for fitness. So what could be causing this detrimental dip in the health of our society? Sugar. And unless serious changes occur it will slowly kill our generation.
This story begins begins far before 2017. It begins with the very first governmental dietary guidelines created in the year 1977, known as the McGovern Report. The Senate’s Special Committee on Nutrition disclosed expert scientific testimony which warned Senator George McGovern that obesity would soon be the leading cause of malnutrition in the United states. Because of this warning the United States government released the McGovern Report which strongly encouraged Americans to drastically reduce their consumption of sugar and saturated fat in order to avoid obesity. If these dietary guidelines had been enacted at the time in which they had been created, according to the documentary FedUp, it is undoubtable that the obesity epidemic in America would not be in the same place that it is today. Unfortunately that is not the path that history took. Instead the Egg, Sugar, and Beef Associations, with their sales in peril, flat out rejected the report and demanded a rewrite. Because of their sway in the Senate the report was edited and the words “reduced intake” were removed. Instead Americans were encouraged to buy more food with less fat. This modified report was the beginning of the end for the healthy consumption of sugar by most Americans.
Since this report was made public in 1977 Americans have doubled their sugar intake, due in large part to the trend of fat reduction that has swept the nation and the world. With the health movement came the phrase “reduced fat.” People believed that to label the healthiest options available and stocked cupboards with them, completely unaware of the unbelievable amounts of sugar poured inside of these “healthy alternatives.”
When fat is taken out of food it assumes the taste of something akin to cardboard so food companies had to find an affordable solution for how to make it more palatable, so they turned to sugar.
The FDA does not require companies to show how much of the recommended sugar intake their product takes up. The everyday person would never suspect that products such as non-fat fruit yogurt have, in one serving, 47 grams of sugar which is almost twice the daily amount. Or that in one lowfat muffin hides almost all of the recommended 25 grams or 6 teaspoons of sugar allowed per day. Studies done by the World Health Organization showed that the majority of Americans are consuming about 20 tsp. of sugar a day which is three times the daily recommendation.
But how could sugar lead to obesity and its related diseases? Sugar in and of itself is not just “unhealthy,” but according to the National Public Radio article “50 Years Ago Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat,” by Camilia Domonoske in large enough amounts, which many Americans consume everyday, it is toxic to the liver. When sugar is introduced into the body it must be processed by the liver. However when the body is flushed by sugar the organ becomes overworked and falters, but the pancreas comes to its rescue. The pancreas increases its levels of insulin production which turns the sugar directly into fat stores in the body and releases fat particles into the bloodstream. This influx of sugar also stops the signals to the brain telling it that the body is full.
Our world has changed and it is not for the better. The favored drink among children is now soda rather than milk as it was in the ‘60s. There are obese six-month-olds, strokes in eight-year-old’s, heart attacks at 20 – all of which almost never occurred 30 years ago. Soft drink companies fund research in universities such as Harvard and donate to professional societies in order to stave off blame towards sugar as a cause for obesity and heart failure.
According to the scientists and nutrition experts in the documentary FedUp, the only way to combat these changes, to reclaim the health of America is to educate ourselves and others from the effects of what we are eating. And learn to never simply take the labels displayed to us at their face value.
