The "Donut Metric"

Mercola posted a great article several months ago called "Surprising Foods with More Sugar Than a Krispy Kreme Doughnut", comparing the sugar content of a donut with the sugar content of various other foods.



His list is definitely worth a look. For context, here are the "Nutrition Facts" from the Krispy Kreme website. It turns out that a "sugar doughnut" contains only 9 grams of sugar—ironically, less than most of the other donut varieties, some of which have 30 or more grams; but I don't think this detracts from his point).

Nevertheless, for anyone who thinks they are avoiding sugar by drinking bottled iced tea, say, rather than cola, please read the label. Arizona Iced Tea, for instance, has about the same amount of sugar in it as Coca Cola (depending on flavor)—so a 20 oz. bottle contains 60 grams of sugar, or "6+ donuts' worth"!

New York Times Article Suggests That Sugar Is Toxic

This weekend's New York Times Magazine contains an article by Gary Taubes entitled Is Sugar Toxic?

Taubes, author of the best-selling Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, starts by citing a lecture given by UCSF professor Robert Lustig arguing that sugar is toxic in the amounts that we are consuming today in the United States, and that sugar consumption is implicated in heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—the "diseases of civilization". He goes farther, saying it's not even clear that there's a "safe" level of sugar consumption, per se. Sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are similarly risky, as far as he's concerned, due to their fructose content, and because of the way the body metabolizes fructose. This also means that fruit juice is no better than soda, from a metabolic point of view at least.

It's not a new argument, but it's one that has been consistently shouted down by folks with a commercial interest in the sugar industry, or with some other sort of bias.

Let's hope the "sugar is toxic" theory gets a fair hearing this time around. Maybe, just maybe, the times are desperate enough that truth might trump profits and entrenched interests.