It’s time to stop telling us what to eat
Jun 23, 2014, 7:21 AM | Updated: 11:35 am
Last week’s issue of TIME magazine had a shocking cover – about a story far more important to national security than anything going on in Iraq.
The headline was simply “Eat Butter,” and there was picture a giant swirl of real butter.
The article basically said we’ve been hoodwinked, tricked into thinking fat was making us fat.
You can see why we might think that but it turns out researchers have known since 2010 that the link between how much fat you eat and how fat you get isn’t as direct as we thought.
The real enemy, as it turns out, was the FEAR of fat.
The article quotes Dr. Robert Lustig, who has for years been warning that the food industry, in its quest to make appealing nonfat foods, basically started adding sugar to everything they got their hands on.
“Tomato sauce, barbeque sauce, ketchup, hamburger buns, hamburger meat. So when people say they don’t eat sugar – they lie,” says Lustig.
We have more nonfat foods than ever, and at the same time, more obesity and type II diabetes than ever!
Food pyramids, diets, school lunch reform, even vegetable jingles have all been a colossal failure.
Crusaders like Dr. Lustig have been arguing that the only thing would make any real difference at this point would be to regulate sugar like an any other addictive substance.
“Sugar meets all the criteria that alcohol does for regulation,” says Lustig.
And as we all know, the Earth will be hit by a civilization-ending asteroid long before that day comes.
So why spend another dime trying to get people to save themselves when they obviously don’t want to? We should spend the money instead on reinforcing America’s aging bridges before they collapse under our collective weight.