Spineless U.S. nutritional guidelines refuse to tell people to avoid eating excess sugar; thanks to influential sugar lobby

Face it, folks: your government is lying to you about health, nutrition and disease prevention. If you want to get the facts, you have to educate yourself (or find an honest nutritionist). Sugar is bad news. It directly causes nutritional deficiencies, obesity, diabetes, mood disorders, and even increases your appetite, causing you to eat more. It stresses your endocrime system and promotes the storage of body fat. But Big Sugar says it's all perfectly healthy for you. It's all "part of a balanced diet," they say. Because all the time you've been eating sugar, they've been smoking crack.

• The evidence is increasingly clear that a good diet can at least delay some indignities of aging.
• A UCLA study published last week demonstrated that mice ingesting DHT, an Omega-3 fatty acid found in soybeans and fish, had a dramatically lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
• Several other recently released studies have shown that antioxidants in fruits such as blueberries and in vegetables such as broccoli can help slow the onset of memory loss.
• Good news, except that blueberries, broccoli and fish guts can't begin to match the influence that dietary supplements, frosted flakes and Ronald McDonald have in Congress and on television.
• The nutritional guidelines proposed last week by a committee appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson point up the problem.
• Yielding to pressure from the sugar lobby, the committee proposed shelving past exhortations for people to "avoid too much sugar."
• Instead, the committee suggested that people "choose carbohydrates wisely for good health."
• Further, the health data in scientific research such as the UCLA study are likely to get lost amid the bogus nutritional claims made in commercials every day.
• Since government was part of the problem, it also should be part of the solution.
• Thompson, who will be accepting public comments on the new nutritional guidelines until Sept. 27, should be pressed to revise them, rejecting the suggestion that health officials stop warning consumers about the dangers of eating too much sugar.
• Until Washington begins touting good research clearly and forcefully, children may continue to get most of their nutritional information from commercials.