Sweet Nothings

Sugar

 

Sugar is apparently:

Toxic and detrimental to society…in fact it is worse than tobacco as tobacco isn’t introduced into food.

 

The BBC tells us that:

Nearly two thirds of people in the UK are overweight or obese – leading to other health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

 

Really?  You have to ask firstly is that true?  Not sure I believe the figure….looking around most people look pretty average to me.  Secondly who sets the parameters to make that judgement…how do you define ‘obese’?

Of course there are official guidelines, but you kind of suspect that many people so categorised would not accept the label…and would say if this is ‘fat’ then I’m quite happy being ‘fat’…so get lost!

The BBC have been banging on all day about this ‘major’ news story….a bunch of arrogant, not to say verging on fascist, doctors have yet again decided to dictate what we can and can’t eat ‘for our own good’.

There doesn’t seem much of a challenge to their claims from the BBC….this report is wholly from the doctor’s point of view save for the inset interview clip.

Campaigners vow to cut sugar in food

 

There is no balancing view in the report to put any other side to the argument….unlike the Telegraph which puts both sides:

Dr Victoria Burley, a senior lecturer in Nutrional Epidemiology at Leeds University, said the group’s claims were alarmist and misleading.

She said: “It is nuts to claim that sugar is as dangerous as alcohol. It’s total hyperbole, quite crazy.”

 

Here is some more of that hyperbole from the campaigners:

Action on Sugar says children are a particularly vulnerable group who are targeted by marketers of calorie-dense snacks and sugar-sweetened soft drinks.

Professor Simon Capewell said: ”Sugar is the new tobacco. Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting parents and children by a cynical industry focussed on profit not health.

 

That’s just rubbish….fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps and whatever were all around in my youth and I wolfed them down as much as anyone when I could…..thing is I was limited in the amount I could eat……and was far from being anywhere near obese….conclusion…it’s not the amount of sugar in the products it’s how much of those products you eat…eat too much lettuce and you will also suffer problems.

As to ‘pressed on unsuspecting parents and children’….well as above..the same foods were available when I was young and yet my parents managed to avoid having cynical industrial types peddle their wares to them ‘unsuspected’ fleecing them for sugarcoated profits.

The doctors seem to think everyone else are stupid and ignorant, and incapable of making their own informed decisions about the food they eat…..and the BBC doesn’t seem to be disabusing the doctors of that opinion.

Listen to the tone when they do bring on an industry spokesman…it’s entirely negative and suspicious of the capitalist exploiters of children.

 

Shame that once again a fanatical pressure group gets given so much credibility and airtime by the BBC without a proper challenge to their claims.

 

 

 

 

 

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27 Responses to Sweet Nothings

  1. Deborah says:

    I have noticed the fads that come with diet,; the f plan, the Atkins, the 5:2 etc. Now what sort of people are the most likely to be taken in by the latest fad? Those Left leaning women that report on the BBC . The reports about sugar being the new alcohol are all part of the same cult, as is that cocaine is only also bad as alcohol and alcohol is legal so cocaine should be too.

       17 likes

  2. Joe Public says:

    Perhaps Eric Pickles could be persuaded to introduce a Private Members Bill to ban the substance?

       10 likes

  3. chrisH says:

    Take sugar out of the prisons now, give them their ciggies back!
    Strasbourg probably onto it all now, compo due to Sutcliffe.
    Maybe it was sugar that took out Adebowales teeth at Belmarsh.

       10 likes

    • Mark B says:

      Not a bad idea to take sugar out of prisoners’ diets. I believe they use to keep them on low calorie diet to keep them weak – (citation need).

      Anyway, sugars can come in various ways, such as carbohydrates – potato’s, rice and cereals. And they can be just as fattening as sugar.

      I think that this is an indirect attack on fast food and other ‘non-approved’ foods. But rather than moderating their own offspring, they seek to control others as well.

         5 likes

  4. nofanofpoliticians says:

    Nearly two thirds of people in the UK are overweight or obese – leading to other health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
    ————————————————————————-
    By the BBC’s criteria, the entire England Rugby squad, and pretty much all players involved in the top 3 tiers of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish rugby are overweight. At almost 19 stone in his rugby playing prime, then English rugby captain Laurence Dallaglio would have been categorised as obese.

    It is indeed hard to believe some of these statements!

       17 likes

  5. Will Jones says:

    Nearly two thirds overweight or obese.

    Interesting that they conflate overweight which could be perfectly healthy with obesity which is clearly bad. Wonder why they didn’t see the need to break down the percentages on their findings.

    I guess it wouldn’t sound nearly as alarming to say that two thirds of the population are overweight and some of them are obese.

    How bout “nearly two thirds of the population are overweight or serial killers”. That would be equally true. Watch for it on Today.

       11 likes

  6. ember2013 says:

    It’s all about moderation. Say what you like about Christianity in Britain, years ago, but it did curtail some of the excesses we have today and without fear of being decapitated.

       15 likes

  7. GCooper says:

    It’s always amusing to find The BBC and its arch enemy , The Daily Mail, on the same side.

    And why are they on the same side? Because both allow themselves to be hijacked by tiny, fanatical single issue pressure groups in the quest for sensational stories – and because both are in thrall to the modern neo-puritanism that hates nothing more than people enjoying themselves.

       18 likes

  8. cyclops says:

    I’m afraid I’ve got to disagree on this one. We’re fatter than ever and one trip round a supermarket will show you that That’s not about being puritanical I don’t think. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself but from what I’ve seen there’s something on this that tips you into a point where you’re not as in charge as you might feel.

    There’s a useful video on the internet by a paediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig that explains where all this comes from and explains what goes wrong in our bodies with a lot of sugar and how sugar creates similar addictive responses in the brain to cocaine.

    As people say moderation is one thing, but the argument goes that it’s being stuck in all kinds of food, especially many low fat foods because without the fat it tastes like sh*t.

    I know I get on a bit of hobby horse on this one but in my past life I watched lots of people die of heart disease day in day out and it ain’t pretty.

       6 likes

    • GCooper says:

      I’m sorry, your diagnosis is flawed. Obesity levels are blamed on whatever fashionable cause happens to appeal to a baffled medical profession at the time. Twenty years ago it was animal fats.

      The sooner the medical profession learns to say ‘sorry – we don’t know yet’ the better for us all.

         14 likes

    • Pounce says:

      Cyclops,
      I watched a program last night about a fat clinic in Sunderland. I accept the fact that we are getting fatter, however can somebody please explain how somebody can get up to 47 stone in weight? Ok maybe there aren’t that many people that size, but you know what there are plenty at 20 stone, how the hell can we blame that weight gain on sugar.
      Do we discount:
      Sedentary lifestyles:
      The auto mobile culture
      Computers
      Binge drinking
      Cheap and shoddy food.

      lets have a debate on the rise of the fatty, but lets look at everything in context, for some strange reason we don’t and instead always point the finger at fast food and its constituent parts. Shouldn’t we instead be promoting the noun: Moderation

         8 likes

      • cyclops says:

        Agree entirely Pounce. I guess I was disagreeing that because it was on the BBC it was rubbish from start to finish. I agree that sugar is a component that fits in with all the other things.

        Like you I can’t work out how folk get that big. Well I ca and then wonder what’s wrong with world. I watched one a few years ago with some bloke was one of those monster weights we’re seeing. He was bed bound and it turned out the wife was shovelling endless crap down his throat at his request.

        When asked why she did it, she says she tried but he kicked off. I was yelling at the telly along the lines of “what are you on about. He can’t do anything cos he can’t get out of bed. If you don’t feed him, he starves”

        But I agree it’s the whole shooting match. We need to cut back, moderate the crap and get our arses of the chair.

           4 likes

    • Mark B says:

      The Nations health was never better than it was in the WII through rationing. Dairy products and meat were rationed but vegetables were not. Bread and other cereals were also in short supply.

         4 likes

  9. Philip says:

    The London Tate Art galleries (and the one in Cornwall) were all paid for by the British ‘Tate and Lyle’ Sugar group refineries (Refined Jamaican Cane sugar – rather than crude Sugar beet). The last English refinery is being closed due to the EEC (which has effectively banned Sugar Cane in favour of Sugar Beet – now grown by the French). The truth is that we collective English are all Sugar ‘addicts’ who must have ‘flouride’ added to our Toothpaste and water supply. The privatised water companies (now partly French owned) profit from the vast amounts of water being literally ‘flushed’ down the WC. I suspect most of that Sugar (beet) ends up in BBC french pastries. Have you noticed how the BBC presenters white teeth may be ‘painted on’ – consistant with a relatively poor diet of ‘hyper’ sugar intake. It could also explain the slight EU bias against sugar. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9904266/The-EUs-sugar-ruling-thats-left-a-bitter-taste-at-Tate-and-Lyle.html

       5 likes

  10. deception says:

    How many people do you know , who are over weight or classed as obese, eat/drink sugar free or dietary foods. And don’t lose no weight?

    Aspartame, which is a sugar free product, put in diet juices, sugar free gum, and added to other foods.

    This Aspartame, which is made from a GMO E.coli’s feces.
    This product is a neurotoxin, which is far greater worse on the pancreas than sugar, and has a greater effect to produce diabetes and obesity dangers. When it assimilates in the body, it converts to methanol, which is a poison, and causes long term effects on the body, such as impotence and blindness.

    If people who are obese or over weight, the best thing they can do is learn about nutrition and the effects of nutrition on the body. As body fat, is a safety survival mechanism when the brain alerts the body to conserve when it feels in threat or danger of survival.

    So why the natural sugar ‘rampage’, when they’re far greater worse patented products to be sold?

    Pharmacist Ben Fuchs on the 8 Chapters of Good Nutrition Part 1

       3 likes

  11. thoughtful says:

    Listening to the Today program on this subject the interviewer (Humphries?) was really sceptical and it seemed that it was only manners and the fact he was on the air that stopped him really going for the sugar nut!

    The moral here is don’t eat processed food because you don’t know what’s in it, nor what’s been done to it!

    11 teaspoons of sugar in a small pot of yoghurt? Well I knew it was high but that’s ridiculous!

    Every now & again a new generation of doctors / experts want to make their mark and a lot of money and a new food scare is born. It’s worked like this for years, why is anyone surprised?

       7 likes

  12. Pounce says:

    Is the UK getting fatter…certainly. Do we actually require more rules in which to dictate what we can actually eat. No

    The left quite rightly shout out about central control and that people should be control of their lives. Yet ironically the left also champion control of everything by the state. But lets go further, a huge proportion of the rise in C2 diabetes is Asian and Black derived. That isn’t down to sugar, rather its down down to the large consumption in rice (look it up) and the home cooking they continue to eat from their home countries.
    It seems that just as the left have almost won the battle against tobacco (while promoting shisha ,Khat and Cannabis as acceptable, they have found a new trendy target of sugar.)
    (Just don’t mention Indian sweets)

       6 likes

  13. Anon says:

    The biggest sweet nothing is this website.

    Now before some idiot accuses me of being a random troll who has wandered in from the guardian website, I have made many anti-bbc posts to this site under my usual nom de plume but as this is my last post to this pointless site then I will write anonymously.

    My point is, this site is for talkers not do-ers. People who will vote UKIP or Conservative in 2015 and then scurry back to their home when labour wins the next election. You will be back here whining for another 5 years of do-nothing.

    labour has the media sewn up. It has the police sewn up. Even the Army Rumour Service forum has soldiers bleating the latest leftist propaganda. You can all forget trying to change opinion with enemies like these.

    This talking shop is a waste of time. The streets are where future battles will be fought and not on this website.

    This website has too many arguments running simultaneously and the majority of them pointless. Climate change and sugar, who gives a fuck?

    islam and smashing the leftist media stanglehold, those are the only two subjects that should be discussed here. And how you are physically going to put an end to both.

       2 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      ‘Now before some idiot accuses me of being a random troll who has wandered in from the guardian website’
      Random? The very idea.
      Though, cut ‘n pasting the same post in this manner across threads could to some be suggestive of certain predispositions.
      But the move to Anon is certainly a sensible one. Unlike so many, like ‘Pounce’, ‘Thoughful’ & ‘Deception’ immediately above, it moves one to (as the name suggests) anonymity no one else clearly can or would seek.
      Along with all preceding you who have found this site so pointless they often cannot quite bear to leave its warm embrace, whatever the next nom de plume, one is sure it will be ‘au revoir’ over ‘adieu’.
      Until then…

         4 likes

      • deception says:

        A name is only a corporate title. Whats the big deal of a name?, is it for ‘ego’, or to be ‘noticed’? (how about privacy?)When we only have temporary use of a name, is it not after all to ‘communicate’, or to ‘refer’ to? Is it all a ‘perplexity’ about identification?

           2 likes

    • Stewart says:

      Anon there are plenty of other sites out there that cater to your lust for direct action ( I know I visit some of them) Problem is all those ‘right wing’ street ideologues seem to get their arses kicked by the better funded and organised ‘left wing’ street ideologues .And that will remain the case until the liberal inquisition is evicted from it entrenched positions in education and the media.
      I believe there is a way to do that but it involves giving electoral support to parties we might otherwise detest
      Another thing you could do is join a trade union and progress up through the ranks by representing the immediate interests of the workforce and not the ideological goals of the bourgeois intelligentsia that control them ( the unions ) Its an up hill struggle but of more long term value than trading blows islamofacists or their middle class lap dogs

         2 likes

    • Stewart says:

      Heads up Anon (if your still with us) this might interest you
      http://t.co/uJA5X1CMh1
      Right up your street?

         1 likes

  14. Span Ows says:

    The country consuming the most sugar is…wait for it…India, a country known to be full of fat obese people. They consume 50% more than the entire EU27 combined. Ah, but there are more people and as China comes in at 3rd place, more people could be the reason; so who’s next? Brazil, another country overuse with fat obese bastards…oh.

    It has NAFF ALL yo do with sugar.

       5 likes

  15. leftapostate says:

    no fags, no booze, no sweeties…nanny knows best.

    if the state tries to take my choccy after making booze more expensive than illegal drugs and ‘legal highs’, making smokers into social pariahs and taxing cigs and ceegars to a ridiculous degree, then they will find me a bit more militant than they expect.

    and the experts never mention that running, cycling and extreme sports also cause fatalities or call for these (which most reasonable people avoid) to be regulated/banned.

    curiously i’m reminded of an old 1980s Judge Dredd strip where the criminals were smuggling/selling sugar. that was laughable…at the time.

       4 likes