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Sugar – A Sweet Addiction 10
The Cause of Morbid Childhood Obesity 18
Is Stevia Natural? 82
Should We Add Sugar to Everything Kids Eat? 20
Hip-Hop Video Compares the Food Industry to Drug Dealers 12
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Hip-Hop Video Compares the Food Industry to Drug Dealers

February 28 20:31 in Addiction, Industrial food-like products

Are food industry executives thinking and acting like drug dealers? Just a couple of days after I made that exact comparison here’s this video.

Before anyone mentions that the industry is just selling what people want, consider this from a blog post at TreeHugger:

This is usually where someone chimes in with arguments about freedom of choice, free markets and personal responsibility. And this is where the analogy between fast food and hard drugs becomes particularly useful. We don’t allow drug dealers to pedal crack cocaine for a very good reason – and we certainly don’t let them put up billboards, advertise to our kids, or lobby congress.

Freedom of choice does not work for people who are addicted. Although I would prefer to compare junk food addiction to smoking, rather than crack cocaine. That may be slightly over the top.

Is it a fair comparison? What do you think?

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Should We Add Sugar to Everything Kids Eat?

February 20 12:01 in Addiction, Food for kids, Sugar/fructose

Veggies

How do you get kids to eat more vegetables? Reports show that kids tend not to enjoy eating veggies at school lunches, often discarding them uneaten.

This is not a joke: At the recent meeting of the American Society for the Advancement of Science a radical new method was discussed. Researchers have found that putting sugar on top of the veggies makes kids like them more:

In the community, 2 of 3 preschoolers preferred vegetables lightly misted with small amounts of sweetener to plain vegetables. Serving lightly sweetened vegetables weekly across 4 weeks was associated with increases in vegetable intake compared with little change for preschoolers served plain vegetables.

Great. So now that kids are already addicted to sweet junk food we’re going to give up and put sugar in everything they eat?

Crazy times.

There’s another, better, solution. My 17 months-old daughter loves veggies like broccoli and carrots, she can’t get enough of them. Why? Her veggies are fried in butter. A healthy choice: Butter is better.

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The Cause of Morbid Childhood Obesity

February 17 21:10 in Addiction, Sugar/fructose, The Obesity Epidemic

Why do some kids get really obese? What’s the most common cause? Watch the first three minutes of this documentary and you’ll see an extreme example.

It’s hardly a lack of physical activity. It’s an addiction to processed high-carb junk food. The stuff that skyrockets your fat-storing hormone insulin.

We don’t let our kids get addicted to alcohol. We don’t let them become addicted to smoking. Perhaps we should be equally cautious when it comes to soda and high-carb junk food.

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Is Stevia Natural?

August 28 2012 10:22 in Addiction, Non-caloric sweeteners

Stevia is a non-caloric sweetener that is relatively new on the international market. It originates in the leaves of a South American plant. Because of that it’s marketed as a “100% natural” alternative to other non-caloric sweeteners.

There’s been some discussion about how natural it really is, as it’s extracted from the leaves using different solvents and goes through further chemical processes before it emerges as a white sweet powder.

Personally I’m no fan of sweeteners, regardless of their origin. They tend to maintain an addiction to sweets. I’ve never seen Stevia as “natural”. It’s purified from leaves and thus it’s no more natural than snorting cocaine (which is also purified from leaves).

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Sugar – A Sweet Addiction

May 5 2012 21:55 in Addiction, Robert Lustig, Sugar/fructose

Is sugar potentially addictive, like alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs? The answer is likely yes.

Here is the fourth part of the UCTV-series “The Skinny on Obesity”. Well worth watching.

Earlier parts:

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