Sugar's Got What It Takes

Id rather have sugar than artifical sweetners anyday.

"And can you really rely on food advertisers and lobby groups to "self-regulate"?".....no way, they want to keep making their money and keep you coming back for more of those tasty, sugary, fat, additive-filled foods. It really has to be each person's responsibility to fuel his or her body with nutrient dense whole foods. Refined sugar has zero nutrients, vitamins, or minerals, and it actually leeches those nutrients from your body in order to digest it.

Now if you're eating fresh fruit along with some protein, that's a different story....that natural sugar in the fresh fruit does come into the body with nutrients from the food itself. And I've gotta say, I have high energy from eating whole foods (including fresh fruit), but refined sugar puts me in the dumps.

I feel like they're suggesting that I pour out a heapin' bowl of sugar for "the gang."

Here's your sugar, kids! Eat up!

Both of those things I try to avoid. We have to self-regulate.

I've lost about 25kg since cutting out basically ALL suger, AND aspartane etc from my diet. Used to go through the diet coke in a really big way. Although it's kilojoule free, I sure feel better cutting out the artifcial sweeteners- headaches fatigue etc.- although alot of that was caffeine (also gone)

What year was that ad?

i thought this was a spoof!

I also will take sugar over artificial sweeteners any day. I try to avoid too much sugar, but I never touch the fake stuff. EVER.

The reference to doing the "Watusi" apparently dates it to the early 60's, the heyday of better living through engineering...modify this, reformulate that and soon we'll all have jetpacks and robots!

I try not to take a dichotomous approach to the sugar vs. artificial sweetener debate. It is difficult if not imposible to quantify which one is "better" given the multitude of individual circumstances. In both cases, the dose makes the poison.

While sugar is okay in small amounts for most, we don't NEED sugar as the industry would have us believe. Conversely, I haven't seen any convincing studies that AS' (spenda, aspartame) are unsafe for consumption, but I still wouldn't consume very much of it. The foods that contain AS are best to not eat often anyway.

Here is an example of the absurdity of the sugar industry - from the sugar association website:

"The simple, irrefutable fact is this: Sugar is a healthy part of a diet."

That's probably the year that Kool-Aid came out!

kimmieone said:
What year was that ad?[...]

From the Sugar Association site.

"In 1947, the Association assumed its current name. Initially, the Association had two divisions: Sugar Information, Inc. focused on public education and communication; the Sugar Research Foundation developed and supported basic and applied scientific research. The Research Foundation became the World Sugar Research Organisation, Ltd., in 1968."

I actually saw a commercial the other day for sugar, saying it was the "all natural sweetener" and has "no fat and only 15 calories per teaspoon!" I was pretty shocked to see a commercial for sugar on TV, but whatever. Sugar is absolutely NOT a necessary part of any diet. You get sugars in so many other foods...fruit, certain veggies, milk, etc., so you don't need to add any more usually.

I use "energyless" artificial sweeteners because to me, I'd rather get my calories from things like protein and vegetables and whole grains..things with vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

I eat whole foods, including real sugar (I prefer the taste of turbinado or raw sugar). It's that simple. So no way do I eat the artificial crap.

Sugar isn't that unhealthy. It's certainly better than HFCS. I just moved to Australia from the USA and I found that soda here doesn't contain HFCS. I actually like drinking a small glass of Coke now and then as a treat, and, unlike the Coke back home, I don't crave more food after I drink it. Sometimes I don't even finish the glass. It's like a refreshing dessert.

I saw that insipid sugar propaganda ad with the shirtless actor. The 15 calories per teaspoon bit is a sick joke. 16 calories of sugar is equal to a measly 4 grams. That is no "teaspoon". To burn off the "teaspoon" would require walking 2 and a half football fields distance. The sugar lobby must use one small teaspoon to come up with the 15 calories.

While artificial sweeteners aren't perfect, they are an improvement over the environmental toxin we call sugar. Sugar is killing people faster than tobacco by now and is utterly unnecessary. We need to tax sugar like we do alcohol and tobacco and let food companies use the Splenda instead.

That ad makes me laugh. The food industry has so much influence it is scary!

Artificial sweeteners suck! I read the labels on everything I buy and if I pick up something that contains Splenda aka Sucralose, Saccharin or Aspartame - ha - back on the shelf it goes!! No thanks, won't be putting that "crap" in MY body!! Check out my page on my website I made to help encourage others to boycott this stuff.