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[Music]
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it's sweet it's seductive is it deadly
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tonight the danger of sugar I think that
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sugar is a main contributing factor
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serious new warnings from serious people
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the more I learn about it the more it
00:00:17
scares me also tonight what the sugar
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industry has tried to hide strategies
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that I thought the tobacco companies
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made up back in the ' 50s actually some
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of those the people had done even before
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[Music]
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that when the Breeden family goes
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shopping like most Canadians they try to
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buy healthy let's
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go but like most Canadians they don't
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always succeed they're busy meals have
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to be quick and then there's keeping the
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kids Happy
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lucky CHS or the Mini weats Chocolate no
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I'm one of the lucky ones okay lucky
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terms
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okay you want you want one that looks
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like half a moon or you want a lot of
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what they eat is processed they assume
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it's nutritious but they' never paid
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much attention to what's in the food
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they buy have no idea how much sugar is
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hidden
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in all right guys so I I want you to
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just kind of start by telling me a
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little bit about some of the groceries
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that you got today and um registered
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dietician Jaclyn Pritchard is about to
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help them figure it out have you guys
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ever taken a look at any of the
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nutrition labels or or really paid the
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label on this NES quick cereal says
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there are 10 g of sugar in 3/4 of a cup
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but whoever eats just 3/4 of a cup just
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check the ingredients now how many of
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those would go into your bowl to make up
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your bowl of cereal for me
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um I'd say probably like eight
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11 that's a lot of cereal and as
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Jonathan Breeden is about to find out an
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awful lot of added sugar so in your
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serving of cereal of about eight of
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these servings you're looking at about
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20 tpoon of sugar added of of
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non-nutritional value that's a lot
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yeah so let's start at the beginning
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what do we mean when we say sugar well
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whether it's the white stuff that you
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bake with or the brown stuff that you
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sprinkle on your oatmeal whether it's
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honey molasses syrup maybe the high
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fructose corn syrup you've heard of
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there's a lot of that in things like pop
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chemically it's all pretty much the same
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thing and we do consume a
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lot on average in this country 26
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teaspoons of sugar per person per day
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that's 40 kilos a year the equivalent of
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20
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[Music]
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bags it's it's what sweetens the
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products and spikes the profits of some
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of the most powerful and familiar
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companies in the world the food industry
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is one of the biggest manufacturers in
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North America nearly a trillion dollars
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in sales every year and it couldn't do
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it without
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sugar sugar is one of the essential
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basic ingredients used and 99% of the
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processed foods out there former
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industry executive Bruce Bradley has
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worked for some of North America's
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biggest food
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companies it's something that can drive
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a lot of taste in the products and a lot
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of appeal for consumers so it's it's one
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of the basic building
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blocks and make no mistake the amount of
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sugar in our food is no accident the
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food industry goes to Great Lengths to
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figure out what makes us crave a product
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the exact combination of ingredients it
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calls the Bliss point
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you know everybody asks what is the
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Bliss Point Dr Howard moscovitz he's a
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longtime food industry consultant known
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as Dr
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Bliss the best way I can do it is to
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give you an example do you drink coffee
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with sugar or with milk with milk so if
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you add more and more milk you like it
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more and more up to a certain point
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where you like it the most and then add
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a little bit more milk and you say oh
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it's too milky and my gosh and add a lot
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more milk and it's horrid so it's
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Goldilocks it's the middle it's the best
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one it's the level where you like that
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product the
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most a Harvard trained mathematician
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moscovitz uses models to test people's
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reactions to different versions of a
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product once he's found the Bliss point
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the product hits the shelves from soda
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pop to spaghetti sauce his magic makes
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money
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everybody wants to sell just a bit more
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how do you get that immediate increase
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in acceptance those in the know realize
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you can add a little
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sugar a little the first thing to know
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is that 4 g of sugar is one teaspoon so
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with that in mind let's look at some
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products it's no surprise Coca-Cola has
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a lot of sugar 40 G A can that's 10
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teaspoons but much of the sugar we eat
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is hidden in Foods we don't necessarily
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think of as sweet this oatmeal 3 and 3/4
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taspo of sugar a
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b this vanilla flavored yogurt nearly 5
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teaspoons in just half a
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cup you can find sugar added to Bread
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soup all kinds of condiments hot dogs
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this chicken dinner labeled Healthy
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Choice has 5 and 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
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in every
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serving is this the result there's no
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question as our consumption of sugars
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has grown so have our bodies Canada
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doesn't keep good statistics so we've
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used American ones and those stats rais
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the troubling question are we changing
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our evolutionary
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shape here's the line showing our sugar
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consumption for the last 50
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years here's the number of people who've
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become overweight and
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obese now now look at this line it's for
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cases of type 2
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diabetes and this one diseases of the
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heart back in the ' 80s and '90s we used
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to blame a lot of those problems on
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dietary fat but then we started taking
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fat out of our Foods did the incidence
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of disease go down no so that got a lot
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of doctors and nutritionists asking why
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the answer according to an increasingly
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vocal group is sugar
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which was worse the sugar or the fat the
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sugar a thousand times
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over Robert lustic Doctor Author medical
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professor and one of the leaders of the
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anti-sugar
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campaign the fact is our food supply has
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been altered and adulterated under our
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very noses and in plain sight over the
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past 30
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years in addition to treating obese kids
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lustig is a YouTube sensation his
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lecture on sugar has been seen by nearly
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4 million people around the world and he
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doesn't pull his punches the Fat's going
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down the sugar is going up and we're all
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getting sick you use words you use
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poison you use toxic MH certainly I use
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those words and I mean them I'm this is
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not hyperboy this is the real deal
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everyone thinks that the bad effects of
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sugar are because sugar has empty
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calories what I'm saying is no actually
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there are lots of things that do have
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empty calories that are not necessarily
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poisonous poisonous he says because of
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what too much sugar does in our body so
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let's take a look at that sugar is made
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up of two molecules one called glucose
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here in blue the other fructose in red
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when they separate in our gut the
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glucose circulates throughout our body
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feeding our muscle mus in our brain but
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the fructose goes right to our liver and
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it's in the liver where all kinds of
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problems
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begin when you metabolize fructose in
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excess your liver has no choice but to
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turn that energy into liver fat and that
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liver fat then causes all of the
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downstream metabolic
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diseases we'll tell you more about those
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diseases in a moment but first let's
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talk about your brain too much fructose
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is lustig shuts down the part of your
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brain that tells you when you're
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full it doesn't get registered by the
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brain as you're having eaten so if you
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take a kid and prep them with a soft
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drink and then let him loose at the fast
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food restaurant does he eat less or does
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he eat more turns out he eats
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more I think there's a long way to go
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before um the literature is sort of
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out Phyllis Tanaka speaks for the
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biggest food companies in
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Canada she doesn't buy Dr lustig's
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theories and doesn't think consumers
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should
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either I think it's more important that
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we step back and look at how do we uh
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look for ways to educate and help
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consumers fit sugar into a healthy
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dietary
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pattern but the industry sure doesn't
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make it easy look at this breakfast bar
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there's sugar near the top of the
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ingredient list but there's four more
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sweeteners would you know that
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chemically they're all the
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same then there's this tomato soup who
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knew it would have added sugars
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[Music]
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too how is a consumer supposed to know
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that healthy old tomato soup has 3 and
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1/2 teaspoons of sugar in a cup well how
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did you figure it out by the nutrition
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PX table I figured that out because I've
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spent a lot of time recently learning
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about what a gram of sugar is and how to
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read these labels do you think most
00:10:34
people know how to do that in the last
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couple of years we engaged with health
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Canada on a a campaign called the
00:10:41
nutrition facts education campaign in
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large part as a commitment to help
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Canadians understand how to go into the
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grocery store and make informed choices
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but surely there is a way to to warn
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people who might be interested in this
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that a cup of this
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of this soup brings you 3 and 1 12
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teaspoons of
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sugar to what end though well if if they
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have decided that as part of their
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healthy diet they want to eat less
00:11:13
sugar well let me
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see then they would use this same
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um uh label the only information on the
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label is 14 g of sugar in half a cup do
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you know what that
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[Music]
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means you shouldn't have to be a
00:11:34
dietitian to figure out how much added
00:11:36
sugar you're eating but it helps Jaclyn
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Pritchard has added up all the sugar
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Jonathan eats in a week it's pretty
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scary this is your week's worth of sugar
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intake then so this is equal to
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245 um teaspoons of sugar that's a lot
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of
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sugar when we come back wet all that
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excess sugar might be leading
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[Music]
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[Music]
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to got 2 g of sugar for
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that having discovered just how much
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sugar is in their food the Breeden
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family is on on a purge okay the craft
00:12:30
Dusty Italian has the 1 g of sugar in
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this
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one they're still surprised at the kinds
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of products that contain
00:12:39
sugar but they're also determined all of
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it out it
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goes of course they still have to eat so
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to help them learn about life beyond
00:12:49
processed foods we've made them a deal
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for 3 weeks we'll provide all of their
00:12:53
meals professionally made without any
00:12:56
added sugar they'll stick to the diet
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and submit to medical
00:13:01
tests lucky CHMS ain't so lucky
00:13:10
anymore they're only in their mid-20s
00:13:13
but according to Medical standards both
00:13:15
Jonathan and Anna are technically obese
00:13:18
5-year-old Ruby is hovering on the
00:13:23
edge we started our experiment by having
00:13:26
their blood tested and analyzed by
00:13:29
obesity specialist Dr Dan Flanders the
00:13:32
family he says is heading for trouble
00:13:34
looking at these results I would say
00:13:36
that I'm very concerned quite frankly if
00:13:39
they don't make meaningful change to
00:13:42
their lifestyle relatively soon um
00:13:46
there's a higher chance that they're
00:13:48
heading for a life of lousy quality of
00:13:52
life and early
00:13:55
death like most of us getting fatter and
00:13:58
sicker the breedens might be forgiven
00:14:00
their nutritional ignorance but the food
00:14:03
industry has known and discussed links
00:14:06
between processed food and disease for
00:14:11
[Music]
00:14:13
decades it was miniapolis
00:14:16
1999 obesity was only an emerging
00:14:19
problem back then when the heads of
00:14:21
America's biggest food companies arrived
00:14:23
for a rare meeting among them the heads
00:14:26
of craft Nabisco Nestle Coca-Cola
00:14:29
and General
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[Music]
00:14:32
Mills these are Executives who normally
00:14:35
are biting each other for space on the
00:14:38
grocery
00:14:41
store they don't get together very often
00:14:44
but in 99 they got together to talk
00:14:47
about
00:14:49
obesity reporter and author Michael Moss
00:14:52
he described the Minneapolis meeting in
00:14:54
his best-selling
00:14:56
book and they had been pulled together
00:15:00
by a cabal of insiders within the
00:15:03
industry who had increasingly become
00:15:05
concerned about um both the industry's
00:15:09
responsibility for and and culpability
00:15:12
for being blamed for
00:15:14
obesity they gathered at the Pillsbury
00:15:17
company headquarters 31st floor the
00:15:19
message they got was
00:15:22
uncompromising and it was delivered by
00:15:24
two of their own Michael mud a top
00:15:27
executive at craft and Jim Hill a
00:15:30
leading nutrition researcher in a slide
00:15:33
presentation obtained by The Fifth
00:15:35
Estate the two men gave it to the bosses
00:15:38
straight a national epidemic there were
00:15:41
too many warnings mud told them before
00:15:44
drawing a parallel designed to make them
00:15:46
uncomfortable tobacco companies had
00:15:49
recently settled a massive lawsuit in
00:15:51
face of evidence their product cause
00:15:53
disease did the food industry he asked
00:15:56
want to be next
00:15:59
if anyone in the food industry ever
00:16:01
doubted there was a slippery slope out
00:16:03
there I imagine they're beginning to
00:16:05
experience a distinct sliding sensation
00:16:08
right about
00:16:10
now Graphics drove home the point maps
00:16:13
showing obesity rates rising and
00:16:16
spreading across the country like a
00:16:19
rash what are the health implications of
00:16:22
all this studies show that obese
00:16:25
individuals are at a higher risk of
00:16:27
developing chronic diseases such as
00:16:29
diabetes heart disease hypertension and
00:16:34
cancer topping the list of contributing
00:16:37
factors the ubiquity of inexpensive good
00:16:40
tasting supersized energy-dense Foods in
00:16:44
other words the very Foods the CEOs were
00:16:47
in charge of
00:16:48
selling the two men were hoping for
00:16:50
money to study the link between food and
00:16:53
obesity instead they got a tongue
00:16:55
lashing starting with Steven Sanger the
00:16:58
head of General Mills he was rather
00:17:00
furious at Mud for bringing this to them
00:17:04
and blaming them for this and his
00:17:06
defense was look we already offer
00:17:10
consumers a choice if they want lowfat
00:17:14
this or low sugar that we have those
00:17:18
products on in the grocery store we feel
00:17:21
we're already being responsible both to
00:17:24
Consumers from a health perspective um
00:17:27
but also to Wall Street in other words
00:17:31
they didn't want to know now it's one
00:17:34
thing to silence Troublesome voices in
00:17:36
their own companies Michael mud
00:17:37
eventually left the food industry out of
00:17:40
frustration but the people who profit
00:17:42
from sugar have proven themselves very
00:17:44
Adept at crushing dissenting voices
00:17:47
everywhere including in the halls of
00:17:55
Science in front of us day by day our in
00:17:58
uh increasingly more and more very
00:18:01
tempting Foods his name was John yudkin
00:18:04
a British nutritionist who in 1972 wrote
00:18:07
a book The Sugar industry did not like
00:18:11
pure white and deadly was a culmination
00:18:13
of Decades of research according to his
00:18:16
son Michael that led yudkin to what were
00:18:18
then controversial
00:18:20
conclusions he started to wonder uh late
00:18:24
in the 1950s whether sugar might be a
00:18:27
culprit in the increase in heart disease
00:18:30
more significant than fat which was the
00:18:32
prevailing opin significant than fat
00:18:35
certainly more significant than fat but
00:18:37
that sugar was also involved in a number
00:18:41
of other undesirable conditions
00:18:43
particularly diabetes and
00:18:46
obesity that thesis soon put yudkin in
00:18:49
direct conflict with big Sugar's biggest
00:18:52
apologist this man American nutritionist
00:18:55
anel keys keys would later be exposed as
00:18:58
having been funded by the industry but
00:19:01
not before he helped destroy John
00:19:03
yudin's
00:19:05
reputation and as early as the 1950s he
00:19:08
had started producing Publications
00:19:11
suggesting that dietary fat was a
00:19:13
problem award-winning science writer and
00:19:16
author Gary
00:19:18
TOS Keys successfully managed to entain
00:19:22
yudkin with this smell of quackery and
00:19:25
from then on in anyone else for the next
00:19:27
20 30 years who did research on sugar
00:19:30
was accused of being just like yudkin
00:19:32
there was a systematic campaign to
00:19:35
discredit or ignore his work because of
00:19:39
the actions of the sugar industry in the
00:19:41
70s virtually no research was funded you
00:19:43
this idea that if you study sugar you're
00:19:45
just like yudkin and he was a quack but
00:19:47
that's remarkable I mean what you're
00:19:49
saying scientific investigation into the
00:19:51
link between sugar and and disease
00:19:54
ground to a halt it ground to a Hal
00:19:59
when we return the science is
00:20:03
back what happens when you take healthy
00:20:05
students and feed them too much
00:20:10
[Music]
00:20:16
[Music]
00:20:27
sugar it's week one of The Fifth Estate
00:20:30
sugar challenge just looking at recipes
00:20:33
that actually help reduce the sugar in
00:20:35
your diet and the breedens are getting a
00:20:37
cooking lesson Chef James Smith is
00:20:40
teaching that real food all the fruits
00:20:42
and vegetables and Grains of a healthy
00:20:45
diet can also be fast and delicious
00:20:48
without any added sugar at all they use
00:20:51
specific ingredients uh that will change
00:20:53
up and lower the sugar and lower the
00:20:55
process foods in your in your diet and
00:20:58
that may prove a good thing because
00:20:59
after Decades of Silence there's new
00:21:02
scientific research linking sugar to all
00:21:04
kinds of chronic
00:21:11
disease Jonathan's blood work suggests
00:21:14
he may be on the verge of getting one Dr
00:21:17
Dan
00:21:18
Flanders his results suggests that he's
00:21:21
pre-diabetic that his levels have been
00:21:24
high and that if we don't make some
00:21:26
changes to his lifestyle soon uh
00:21:28
diabetes is
00:21:30
coming today in North America it's
00:21:33
estimated more than a 100 million people
00:21:36
are diabetic or pre-diabetic Dr Robert
00:21:39
lustig is quite sure he knows why so I
00:21:42
can actually categorically say to you
00:21:44
that sugar is the proximate cause of
00:21:47
diabetes
00:21:49
worldwide and we have hard and fast data
00:21:52
to show that his data come from his own
00:21:55
study done over a decade comparing
00:21:58
diabetes rates in 175 countries with
00:22:02
people's diets and we ask the question
00:22:05
when you adjust for all of the factors
00:22:07
that we know are relevant what about the
00:22:10
food supply predicts diabetes rates
00:22:14
worldwide
00:22:16
answer sugar and only
00:22:20
sugar these studies are generally
00:22:22
considered a very weak level of evidence
00:22:24
a lot of other things have happened at
00:22:25
the same time Toronto researcher Dr John
00:22:28
cepen Piper he argues lustig's
00:22:31
methodology is seriously
00:22:33
flawed methodologists would tell you uh
00:22:36
there's a lot of potential bias and I
00:22:38
could give you one example over the same
00:22:40
time as sugar has gone up so has bottled
00:22:42
water but there's no real biological
00:22:43
plausibility in the link between bottled
00:22:45
water and overweight and obesity so it's
00:22:47
not a I don't think a sound uh finding
00:22:50
but we have to be careful in putting too
00:22:52
much of the biological plausibility and
00:22:53
wanting to believe patterns that we see
00:22:56
his point is it's hard to know what
00:22:58
causes disease and ethically you can't
00:23:00
induce it to find out but you can test
00:23:03
for markers warning signs that disease
00:23:06
may be coming and that's what they're
00:23:07
doing here at the University of
00:23:09
California at
00:23:11
[Music]
00:23:19
Davis in this lab students are the
00:23:22
guinea pigs the scientists are feeding
00:23:25
them sugar to figure out if it raises
00:23:27
the markers for heart heart
00:23:30
disease that drink contained 25% of her
00:23:34
daily calories as high fructose corn
00:23:39
syrup look at this every time they've
00:23:42
run the test says Dr Kimber stanh hope
00:23:44
the results have been the same we saw
00:23:48
increases in visceral adiposity that
00:23:52
means that's the fat within
00:23:55
the abdominal region this is is the fat
00:23:59
surrounding the liver and the intestines
00:24:01
and the kidney this is the fat that is
00:24:05
associated with increase risk for
00:24:07
diabetes and cardiovascular
00:24:10
disease the breedens know that fat Anna
00:24:13
and Jonathan have already been diagnosed
00:24:16
as having fatty livers which puts them
00:24:18
at risk for raised insulin and
00:24:20
triglyceride levels that's the fat in
00:24:22
our
00:24:25
blood when Dr stanh hope tested the
00:24:27
blood of her College guinea pigs healthy
00:24:30
kids with healthy livers she was shocked
00:24:33
by how quickly they saw
00:24:35
problems we definitely in 2 weeks see
00:24:40
increases in the risk factors for
00:24:43
cardiovascular disease in the blood just
00:24:45
in two weeks in two weeks but those
00:24:48
kinds of studies don't impress everyone
00:24:50
after surveying a number of studies
00:24:52
including Dr Stan hopes that look at
00:24:54
sugar and heart disease John Cen Piper
00:24:57
sees no reason for alarm and what we
00:25:00
find when we we look at those trials
00:25:02
very carefully is that as long as you
00:25:04
match for calories fructose does not
00:25:06
behave differently than does any other
00:25:09
form of carbohydrate namely starches
00:25:11
refined starches and glucose now that's
00:25:13
not to say that they're benign because I
00:25:15
don't think we should be having a lot of
00:25:16
refined starch or glucose but it's not
00:25:17
behaving any
00:25:19
differently sides Stan hope can't speak
00:25:22
to the other studies but she says she
00:25:24
tested for all kinds of things and it
00:25:26
was only the fructose that caused the
00:25:28
the
00:25:29
problems if I had results as strong with
00:25:35
regard to a food additive a brand new
00:25:38
food additive and then I started
00:25:41
producing these results they would that
00:25:43
additive would get pulled pretty quickly
00:25:46
That's How Strong these results are I
00:25:48
think they
00:25:50
are in the world of cancer research leis
00:25:54
kley is a rock star 5 years ago the
00:25:57
Cornell University Professor was chosen
00:26:00
to head a scientific Dream Team a group
00:26:03
of America's top Cancer Specialists
00:26:05
brought together to supercharge the
00:26:07
search for a cure his findings may not
00:26:10
be embraced by everyone but in the
00:26:12
cancer world when cly talks people
00:26:16
listen let me ask then do you believe
00:26:20
that Sugar
00:26:21
consumption causes cancer I think yes I
00:26:25
think that uh eating too much sugar can
00:26:28
definitely increase the probability of
00:26:30
cancer and also make the outcome of
00:26:33
people who already have cancer uh out
00:26:36
worse so how well let's review what
00:26:39
sugar's made of one molecule glucose and
00:26:42
one fructose we know that when there's
00:26:45
too much fructose in the liver it sets
00:26:47
off a chain reaction the pancreas
00:26:50
produces more insulin what klyy now
00:26:52
believes is that excess insulin changes
00:26:55
cancer tumors telling them to gobble up
00:26:58
the
00:26:59
glucose what we're now learning is that
00:27:03
some of the cancers particularly those
00:27:05
cancers that correlate with obesity and
00:27:08
diabetes often have insulin receptor on
00:27:11
the cancer cell the tumor by expressing
00:27:14
the insulin receptor tricks the glucose
00:27:16
into going into the tumor rather than
00:27:18
the muscle and fat and as a consequence
00:27:21
the tumor can use that glucose as a fuel
00:27:23
to
00:27:25
grow so if sugar can fuel existing
00:27:28
tumors and make them grow can it also
00:27:31
cause tumors to form in the first place
00:27:34
the science on that isn't as clear yet
00:27:37
but kle is taking no
00:27:39
chances it scares me yes I think if
00:27:43
definitely for ex I don't you know I'll
00:27:46
eat fruit fruit has sugar in it
00:27:48
obviously uh but if I can avoid any
00:27:50
sugar at all in any drinks that I drink
00:27:53
or Foods I try to avoid processed foods
00:27:55
because it's hard to find one that
00:27:56
doesn't have sugar in it
00:27:59
um I certainly avoid sugar when I
00:28:02
[Music]
00:28:05
can one of the criticisms of the
00:28:07
anti-sugar scientists is that too much
00:28:10
of their evidence comes from animals not
00:28:13
humans that said here at Brown
00:28:15
University in Rhode Island they're doing
00:28:17
studies they think should make a lot of
00:28:19
humans
00:28:22
nervous this rat is perfectly healthy
00:28:25
put him in a vat of water and he finds
00:28:27
his way to saf safety every
00:28:31
time
00:28:34
5.2 now look at this
00:28:37
guy what he's been eating is the
00:28:39
equivalent of a North American diet
00:28:41
complete with all the fats and sugars we
00:28:44
regularly
00:28:45
consume he doesn't know where to go his
00:28:49
brain has been
00:28:51
damaged these rats were totally normal
00:28:54
and then they turned into demented
00:28:57
animals
00:28:59
they don't remember their learning after
00:29:02
even a day and um as the challenge gets
00:29:05
harder and harder they fail more and
00:29:08
more just like a human with Alzheimer's
00:29:12
disease
00:29:14
36.2 in this lab the belief now is that
00:29:16
Alzheimer's is really diabetes of the
00:29:19
brain linked to insulin levels which can
00:29:22
be affected by too much sugar Professor
00:29:25
Suzanne deamonte insulin resistance we
00:29:28
now know can occur in any organ can
00:29:30
occur in the muscles that's what
00:29:34
diabetes is it can occur in the liver
00:29:36
that causes fatty liver disease it can
00:29:38
occur in the ovaries that's polycystic
00:29:41
ovar disease and it can occur in the
00:29:43
brain and we think that's Alzheimer's
00:29:46
now it's important to remember that none
00:29:48
of this research represents the
00:29:50
scientific mainstream the case against
00:29:52
sugar has not been proven associations
00:29:55
on both sides of the border for Al
00:29:58
alimer cancer diabetes including Health
00:30:01
Canada and the FDA they all know about
00:30:04
this research and yet none of them is
00:30:06
warning about links between sugar and
00:30:08
disease but there is one important group
00:30:12
that is raising the
00:30:14
alarm the American Heart Association now
00:30:17
recommends that people cut back on added
00:30:19
sugar dramatically women should have no
00:30:22
more than six teaspoons A Day Men nine
00:30:27
don't forget the total sugar intake in
00:30:29
this country per person is 26 teaspoons
00:30:32
a
00:30:34
day and yet the Canadian food industry
00:30:38
remains unimpressed that's all we've
00:30:41
talked to people who are quite convinced
00:30:43
that there is a relationship a
00:30:45
correlation between sugar and diabetes
00:30:48
and heart disease
00:30:50
cancer uh
00:30:52
dementia what happens if those people
00:30:55
are
00:30:56
right uh at this point in time I'm
00:30:59
comfortable saying that the science just
00:31:02
isn't there to support a role in chronic
00:31:04
disease compc when we come back
00:31:07
government goes on the attack if your
00:31:09
kids drink one bottle of soda a day
00:31:11
they're eating the equivalent of 50 lbs
00:31:13
of sugar a year the equivalent of 50 lbs
00:31:15
of sugar from just one soda a day and
00:31:18
big sugar Strikes
00:31:21
[Music]
00:31:24
Back everywhere you turn somebody is
00:31:26
telling us what we can't
00:31:34
[Music]
00:31:39
worldwide there are few Industries more
00:31:42
powerful than the processed food
00:31:43
industry or the sugar industry that
00:31:46
feeds it and yet for all their power we
00:31:49
know remarkably little about how they
00:31:55
work Kristen cousins is determined to
00:31:58
change that as a community Care dentist
00:32:01
in Colorado she'd always been interested
00:32:03
in sugar but it wasn't until she
00:32:05
Unearthed a stash of documents from a
00:32:07
sugar company that had gone out of
00:32:09
business that she got a peak into a very
00:32:12
secretive world the first folder that I
00:32:16
pulled out opened up to a memo the blue
00:32:21
letterhead of the sugar Association and
00:32:24
it had the word confidential underneath
00:32:26
the letterhead and I just looked at that
00:32:28
and I oh my God you know what have I
00:32:31
found what she'd found was a directive
00:32:34
from the' 7s a memo to Industry
00:32:36
Executives about a newly published
00:32:38
scientific white paper a paper that
00:32:41
concluded sugar was not only safe but
00:32:45
important it was clear after reading
00:32:47
further that the sugar Association had
00:32:50
funded this white paper called sugar in
00:32:53
the diet of man and they were trying to
00:32:55
make it appear that it was an
00:32:56
independent
00:33:00
study among the more than 1500 pages she
00:33:03
uncovered there were some Canadian ones
00:33:05
too an account of a sugar industry
00:33:07
meeting in the 70s in Montreal that
00:33:10
included Frank talk about heart
00:33:13
disease and the greatest threat to Sugar
00:33:16
consumption is in the field of nutrition
00:33:18
it says more particularly in view of
00:33:20
comments that have been recently made on
00:33:22
the influence of sugar in AOS
00:33:26
sclerosis so they were worried
00:33:28
they were worried as far back as
00:33:30
1971 what does that say to
00:33:35
you they've known for a long time so I
00:33:38
took this paper and crossed out where it
00:33:40
said tobacco and put in sugar and looked
00:33:43
to see if I could find similar tactics
00:33:46
that the sugar industry was
00:33:49
using today cousins is pursuing her
00:33:52
research at the University of California
00:33:54
in San
00:33:55
Francisco and she's doing it under the
00:33:57
toage of someone to whom it all sounds
00:34:01
familiar the amazing thing I learned
00:34:04
from her was that strategies that I
00:34:07
thought the tobacco companies made up
00:34:09
back in the 50s actually some of those
00:34:11
the sugar people had done even before
00:34:14
that well you know now we have 83
00:34:16
million pages of industry documents
00:34:19
that's on the internet we don't bother
00:34:20
stand glance is famous in litigation
00:34:23
circles as a man who first publicized
00:34:25
secret tobacco industry documents
00:34:28
that prove cigarette companies knew
00:34:30
their product was dangerous in the new
00:34:32
sugar documents he sees lots of
00:34:34
parallels to make it more organ well one
00:34:37
parallel is just trying to undermine
00:34:39
science another one is working to try to
00:34:41
attack and intimidate scientists and
00:34:44
others who are coming up with results
00:34:47
that the that these big corporate
00:34:49
interests don't like another one is
00:34:52
trying to subvert sensible
00:34:55
regulation the sugar industry has
00:34:57
Decades of practice in that in 2003 the
00:35:01
World Health Organization in Geneva was
00:35:03
looking at a resolution recommending
00:35:06
people reduce their sugar intake to just
00:35:08
10% of what they eat it had broad appeal
00:35:12
among Health experts but then the
00:35:14
industry weighed
00:35:16
in the sugar industry went to their um
00:35:20
friends in the US Congress and they got
00:35:23
these uh very influential congressmen to
00:35:25
write letter and say that this is simp
00:35:27
unacceptable and in fact that the US
00:35:30
would um you know P its funding for the
00:35:33
World Health Organization if this report
00:35:35
continued 5 months later the
00:35:37
recommendation quietly
00:35:42
disappeared having seen the movie before
00:35:44
Stan glance says we can't afford to let
00:35:47
it happen again we wouldn't have a
00:35:50
tobacco epidemic if there wasn't a
00:35:52
tobacco industry we wouldn't have an
00:35:54
obesity epidemic if there wasn't an
00:35:56
industry that was is making a lot of
00:35:58
money selling sugar and fat and salt and
00:36:01
things like that and to me the bottom
00:36:03
line is that one of the key disease
00:36:05
recors for non-communicable diseases as
00:36:08
big
00:36:09
corporations and I think we're going to
00:36:12
have to get these big corporations under
00:36:16
control it has become a bit of a moral
00:36:19
issue um when you
00:36:21
see uh the the the L How Far We've Come
00:36:27
Bruce br who used to help run a number
00:36:29
of those corporations agrees this isn't
00:36:32
a blip this isn't a minor you know we
00:36:34
just need a minor course correction
00:36:36
we're on a completely wrong trajectory
00:36:39
with our health what's the answer then I
00:36:42
think the the honest answer is that we
00:36:45
need government to step in and to become
00:36:47
an advocate for
00:36:49
consumers but sugary drinks are a big
00:36:52
reason for but look what's happened when
00:36:53
governments have tried earlier this year
00:36:56
New York City passed law Banning
00:36:58
supersized sugary drinks if your kids
00:37:01
drink one bottle of soda a day they're
00:37:03
eating the equivalent of 50 lb of sugar
00:37:05
a year the equivalent of 50 lbs of sugar
00:37:08
from just one soda a day industry's
00:37:11
response to ridicule Mayor Michael
00:37:13
Bloomberg as an overbearing Nanny the
00:37:16
law was later overturned by the
00:37:20
[Music]
00:37:24
courts everywhere you turn somebody is
00:37:27
telling us what we can
00:37:29
eat but Advocates keep on trying two
00:37:33
weeks ago in Washington Congressman
00:37:35
calling on the government to help
00:37:37
consumers by demanding better labels and
00:37:40
at the very least recommending a daily
00:37:42
limit for how much sugar is
00:37:46
safe in Canada and the US those limits
00:37:49
exist for other ingredients like fat and
00:37:52
sodium manufacturers must say what
00:37:55
percentage of the recommended daily
00:37:56
limit they're product contains but next
00:37:59
to Sugar
00:38:01
nothing would your Association
00:38:04
representing the big food manufacturers
00:38:07
in in this country would they accept a
00:38:11
upper limit of how much
00:38:13
sugar Canadians would should be think
00:38:16
that that's kind of hypothetical because
00:38:19
people are putting on the table saying
00:38:20
this is one way to if you want to curb
00:38:22
the amount of sugar people are eating
00:38:24
this is one way to to start doing that I
00:38:26
think the industry has responded to the
00:38:30
need for uh a a diverse supply of foods
00:38:35
out in the retail Marketplace across our
00:38:38
portfolio of more than 650 beverages we
00:38:40
now offer over 180 low and no calorie
00:38:44
choices and most of our today even
00:38:46
Coca-Cola the world's largest sugar user
00:38:49
knows it can't ignore the health debate
00:38:52
anymore we'd like people to come
00:38:54
together on something that concerns all
00:38:55
of us obesity Coca-Cola and everything
00:38:58
but the bottom line hasn't changed if
00:39:00
you're getting sick from what you eat
00:39:03
it's your
00:39:05
fault for people to to blame the
00:39:08
consumer to blame the victim in all of
00:39:10
this just as the tobacco companies blame
00:39:13
the the 12 year olds they go out and
00:39:15
addict it it it's just not fair because
00:39:18
people aren't given the information that
00:39:20
they need if they're trying to make a a
00:39:22
a good choice as with tobacco at some
00:39:26
point it will all come down to lives and
00:39:28
to Dollars the Reckoning warns Dr lustig
00:39:32
is
00:39:33
coming bottom line there will be no
00:39:35
money left by the year
00:39:38
2026 for anything else because diabetes
00:39:41
will have chewed through all of the
00:39:43
health care dollars there will be no
00:39:46
Health Care in 13 years here in America
00:39:49
if we do nothing and I'm sure Canada is
00:39:52
right
00:39:56
behind for 3 weeks the breedens have
00:39:59
been eating the food we've
00:40:01
supplied how much s do you want Anna
00:40:04
they're still eating the kinds of food
00:40:06
they like as much as they like the only
00:40:09
difference none of it's processed and
00:40:11
none has added sugar need my mind cuz
00:40:14
it's not too hot hot so has it made a
00:40:17
difference the moment of
00:40:19
truth in 3 weeks Jonathan lost 1 and 1/2
00:40:22
in around his waist 8 and 1/2 lb yeah
00:40:27
yeah Anna's weight is down to and her
00:40:30
waist where all that dangerous fat can
00:40:32
accumulate is down by 5
00:40:37
in helloo and what effect did all that
00:40:39
have on their blood work Dr Flanders
00:40:41
nice to meet you metabolism okay so
00:40:43
Jonathan I'm glad to say that there's
00:40:45
some there's some real signs of things
00:40:47
improving if we have a look at your
00:40:49
cholesterol level it's actually gone
00:40:51
down by 10% which is
00:40:54
fabulous um your triglycerides have gone
00:40:56
down by
00:40:58
20% okay so
00:41:00
Anna her results are equally good and
00:41:04
while our 3-we experiment is far from
00:41:06
scientific proof of anything Dr Flanders
00:41:09
is pleased could improve your health in
00:41:11
the long so this is some evidence that
00:41:14
the changes that you've made to your
00:41:16
eating are are helping to make your body
00:41:19
happier healthier um this is fantastic
00:41:22
news this is really great well when we
00:41:24
first started the project I thought the
00:41:26
change would be like really little that
00:41:28
I wouldn't see anything but to see how
00:41:30
dramatically it's changed means to me
00:41:32
that like it's it's really
00:41:34
good it was a big change at first it was
00:41:37
help but good results I'm happy
00:41:40
[Music]