New research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
links diabetes with the rise in consumption of high fructose corn syrup.
By examining the consumption of food macronutrients (fats, proteins and
carbohydrates) consumed by the population from 1909 to 1997, researchers
were able to correlate, with startling clarity, the rise of diabetes
with the consumption of refined sugars and carbohydrates.
A long
list of nutritionists and naturopaths (myself included) have been
telling the public about this correlation for years. It's nice to see
additional epidemiological research to back up the trend. So what does
it all mean? For starters, it means that the low-fat diet crazy of the
1980's was all wrong. When doctors and the American Heart Association
told people to avoid fat, people consumed massive quantities of refined
sugars, causing an acceleration of chronic diseases like obesity and
diabetes (which, of course, have terrible implications for heart health
as well).
It also means that the current efforts by the Bush
Administration and the sugar industry to claim that carbohydrates don't
promote disease are, of course, hogwash. Due to business interests, the
Bush Administration has been pressuring the World Health Organization to
avoid recommending that people around the world eat less refined sugar.
You see, the United States is the world's largest exporter of
high-sugar, disease-promoting foods and drinks such as soft drinks and
candy bars. If the world is told to eat less sugar, that will not only
make everyone healthier and save billions of dollars in annual health
care costs, it will also hurt the profits of a few influential companies
and organizations in the United States. So, of course, they can't allow
the world to be told to eat less sugar, which is why Big Sugar has
harshly criticized anyone who explains that refined white sugar is bad
for you. That's food politics at work.
Lastly, it also means that
the #1 cause of disease and death in the United States is, in fact, our
national food supply. It is our foods that are killing us, and the
studies prove it. If we weren't eating such high quantities of high
fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, aspartame, sodium nitrite, MSG
and other metabolic disruptors, we'd all be far healthier today. In
fact, if we ate what previous generations ate, our levels of chronic
disease would plummet to the levels observed in the 1940's and 1950's.
And yet, today we have the opportunity to be far healthier than our
grandparents simply because we have access to miracle-class sources of
outstanding nutrition. These "superfoods" include chlorella, spirulina,
flax oil, wheat grass, quinoa and many others. We have access to these
today at affordable prices, allowing us to enhance our health in ways
our grandparents never could have imagined.
It is sad, indeed, that
the American public is now experiencing more chronic disease than at any
time in recorded human history. We've done it to ourselves, and we've
done it by allowing soft drink vendors to invade our schools, by
allowing the sugar industry to control the White House, by allowing food
companies to sell milled grains (like white flour) that lack any notable
nutrition, by falling for the bad nutritional science promoted by the
AHA, ADA and FDA, and by subsidizing both the corn and sugar industries
with hundreds of millions of dollars that ultimately have the effect of
making junk foods far cheaper than healthy foods.
We've done all
this to ourselves, folks, and the vast majority of it has been done in
order to protect the profits of a few influential organizations. But the
ultimate cost is widespread chronic disease and billions of dollars in
associated health care costs.
It's time to do something different.
Join the Consumer Wellness Research Center and become part of the
growing effort to ban soft drinks in our nations schools, end taxpayer
subsidies to sugar companies, create an internal affairs department at
the FDA, and hold food companies responsible for the diseases their
products directly cause. And, of course, don't eat refined carbohydrates
or processed foods if you want to avoid chronic disease.
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher, author and award-winning journalist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he is well known as the creator of popular downloadable preparedness programs on financial collapse, emergency food storage, wilderness survival and home defense skills. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training.
Have comments on this article? Post them here:
people have commented on this article.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Email this article to a friend
