Recently Dr. Robert Lustig and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis have come out in an article in the journal Nature in favor of government regulation of sugar. Much like the regulation of alcohol and tobacco, Lustig is calling for higher taxes and a possible age limit for purchasing sugar.
I consider Dr. Lustig one of the hero’s of our movement to help people get educated about the dangers of sugar. I believe his work, his impeccable credentials and his drive to get this message out are going a long way to raise awareness of this issue. Since the tobacco litigation caused such huge publicity storm – tobacco use has definitely fallen.
There are many voices online speaking of sugar addiction and the dangers of sugar. Dr. Lustig’s approach is 100% necessary. More academics need to get involved in the research and add to the knowledge base.
Here at SugarAddiction.com we, by our very nature, have to approach the problem in a different way. We work only with people who have struggled mightily for years with sugar and finally come to the conclusion that the need help in stopping sugar. We are not in the recruiting or convincing business. If you think you might have a problem with sugar leave a comment below and declare you readiness to change.
One of the best parts of Dr. Lustig’s article in Nature was the courage he showed in broaching of the topic of age restrictions for sugar. We will be starting a new section of the website soon in hopes of educating parents about the dangers of sugar in young children. While I’m not a huge fan of trying to regulate addiction recovery or peoples use of anything, I do believe that feeding children sugar is a topic that needs much discussion. I’m of the simple mind – “if there is a question – why not leave it out?”
That goes for during pregnancy too. This silly, colloquial idea that mom’s get a free pass during pregnancy to eat “weird things”, which usually include huge amounts of sugar and results in a ridiculous and equally huge weight gain, is dumb and dangerous. Dangerous for mom and possibly life altering for baby.
I think that kids should be able to make their own decisions, later in life and on good information, about things like sugar, caffeine and alcohol. We don’t feed them the later so why should they start life with a sugar monkey on their back? We all know, at some level, too much sugar is bad for you so why, why would you want to give that to your kids before they we fully developed and able to choose for themselves? “Choice for Kids” will be the theme of the new section.
