A team of researchers at the University of California-San Francisco are recommending that sugar, like alcohol and tobacco, should be a controlled product. 

www.vancouversun.com/health/Sugar+should...


The researchers say that sugar consumption is responsible for the global obesity pandemic, and it contributes to 35 million deaths worldwide annually from non-communicable diseases and major killers such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.   

Sugar, the researchers argue, is not just empty calories, but is a substance that changes a person's metabolism, raises blood pressure, and causes damage to the liver.  It's basically a toxic substance.

The researchers recommend finding ways to make sugar consumption less convenient, and giving people more food choices that are not so heavily laden with sugar.  

Their report will be published in the February 2 issue of Nature.   

Food Nazis, huh?  So, you figure everybody should just keep right on stuffing their already fat faces with as many empty calories as they can? 

If everybody ends up at 28 stone or over 300 lbs with diabetes and heart trouble, at least they had a five-minute taste sensation gobbling down the soda and chips and sausages, right?  And that's all that's important.

And the people who are doing the research to try to find ways to stop all this gluttony are just a bunch of spoil-sports trying to ruin everybody's fun.

Well, news flash: A lot of what we eat is just plain crap.  And just because we've always eaten some stupid food item does not mean that it is sacrosanct. 

Here in the US, we enjoy certain rights. The limits of these rights extend all the way to the point where they enfringe on the rights of others. One of these rights is the right to make our own choices for how we live our lives, even if these choices are (to the outside observer) stupid choices. One of those choices might be to consume so much sugar that you piss HFCS, and although I am dead set against HFCS and insist that the information regarding its dangerous properties be made widely available, I would never support a control of it, and would oppose a ban. Why? Because we have the right to be stupid, whether the nanny state likes it or not.

Feb 1, 2012 -- 11:23PM, solfeggio wrote:

Food Nazis, huh?  So, you figure everybody should just keep right on stuffing their already fat faces with as many empty calories as they can? 

If everybody ends up at 28 stone or over 300 lbs with diabetes and heart trouble, at least they had a five-minute taste sensation gobbling down the soda and chips and sausages, right?  And that's all that's important.

And the people who are doing the research to try to find ways to stop all this gluttony are just a bunch of spoil-sports trying to ruin everybody's fun.

Well, news flash: A lot of what we eat is just plain crap.  And just because we've always eaten some stupid food item does not mean that it is sacrosanct. 

Last semester I did a report on the whole "Super-Size Me" fiasco for one of my marketing classes.

PM me an address I can use and I'll send it to you.

My basic conclusion?

Misplaced blame.

Not only were several holes poked in the premise of the movie itself (the big one being that the guy kept no record of what he ate, which is a major scientific no-no), I found a few people who actually claimed to have lost weight while eating fast food due to their being smart about what they ate (such as going for side salads instead of fries).

In fact, McDonald's has actually, on the whole, come out ahead on the most recent efforts to make them the scapegoat; they've even figured out a way to work San Francisco's toy ban to their advantage.

The only "losers" in the matter are Subway (which got raked over the coals for some jerkishness on the part of Subway Germany) and a couple of the leading anti-McDonald's pundits (the SF councilman who pushed for the ban? SFISD lunches are worse than Happy Meals, yet when he was with the school system he never once pushed for improved standards).

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."-- John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, 1859