Sweet Suicide – How Sugar is Destroying the Health of Our Society
Nancy Appleton, PhD
Handheld Productions with assistance from Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation
Can be ordered from Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation
In a Princeton study rats were fed sugar for several weeks. When the sugar was taken away they displayed symptoms consistent with drug withdrawal. There were changes to their brain chemistry. When they were fed sugar again, they binged. Sugar increases excretion of calcium, magnesium and copper. Depleting these minerals reduces oxygen and the body becomes more acidic. Refined sugar is an anti-nutrient and anti-mineral substance.
In 1931, Dr. Otto Warburg won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the oxygen transferring enzyme of cell respiration. He said the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by fermentation of sugar. Cancer feeds on sugar. Knowledge about how cancer works has been accumulating for a long time now, yet it continues to be one of the leading causes of death. Warburg said this would continue as long as “the prophets of agnosticism will succeed in inhibiting the application of scientific knowledge in the cancer field.” Prophets of agnosticism include organizations like the American Medical Association, which used to oppose sugar but now does not because they just aren’t sure it’s bad for you. The science of we-don’t-know rules today.
Sugar has been implicated in other crimes against health. Athlete Brian Maxwell created the Power Bar which has five teaspoons of sugar. At age fifty-one he died of a heart attack. Doctor-approved Ensure contains eighteen grams of sugar per serving. During George Washington’s time we consumed thirteen pounds per year per person on average. During George Bush’s time we consumed one hundred fifty pounds per person per year. The difference in cancer and degenerative disease rates during those times is clear.
This video focuses very tightly on sugar, so many of the examples of sugar-laden food also contain other confounding substances like caffeine, MSG, and artificial sweeteners. Overall, though, between the strong correlations and the Nobel Prize-winning science of Dr. Otto Warburg, it is safe to put the thumb down for sugar and UP for this video.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2012.
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