In the last three decades, our world’s population experienced one dramatic statistical change: For the first time in our history, the number of obese people around the globe has surpassed the number of people suffering from malnutrition. While we focused on fighting poverty in order to improve the standard of living around our planet, a new epidemic has emerged which threatens yourself, your children and even your country’s economy. ‘Globesity’ as some like to call it is a phenomenon of the late 20th century and it has been mainly blamed to our over-consumption of fat. At a first glance, it makes sense. People eat more fat, their waistline increases, their arteries get clogged and they die of cardiovascular disease. This is what you have been told. But the evidence suggests that the truth is far darker than that. And the worst thing of all is that some very powerful people around the world are trying on purpose to hide that truth from you.

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HOW EVERYTHING BEGAN

For many years the diet of Americans (and not only) was very low in sugar. Most of the dietary carbohydrates came from the consumption of starch, fruit and vegetables. But in the 60s and 70s something changed. President Nixon, in an attempt to stabilize the price of food and fight poverty, announced a series of policies which resulted in decreased food prices. This was mainly achieved by introducing to the American diet a new substance: High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). For years this seemed like the magic solution. It was sweeter than sugar, cheaper, easier to produce and more economical for farmers. As a result, HFCS found its way into almost every food. Candy, juices, bread, processed meats, soft drinks, cereals, even salad dressings and dairy. It is literally everywhere. Americans went from consuming approximately 15grams of fructose per day in the early 20th century, to consuming on average more than 80grams of fructose today. That’s almost 70 pounds of HFCS for the average American per year.

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Then in the early 80s, as the USA population started to get more and more overweight, the USDA, AMA and AHA gathered together and they decided that the consumption of fat was what caused Americans to become sicker and sicker. They blamed all cardiovascular disease on the increased amount of fats in people’s diet and they advised the American population to decrease their fat consumption to a minimum. This decision was like music to the ears of the Sugar Lobby. They knew that if the Food Industry was to remove fat from their product, there was only one way left to keep their food tasty and appealing to the American consumer: they had to add more sugar into it. And that’s how it all began. What was meant to be a decision to save more American lives, ended up making USA the fattest nation in the world.

BUT IS OBESITY REALLY THE PROBLEM?

You hear very often that obesity is today the main cause of death in developed countries. Fat people are portrayed as greedy and lazy individuals who slowly take themselves to an early grave, taking the country’s health care system with them. Numerous food companies (especially those part of the sugar lobby) will tell you how their products can be part of a healthy lifestyle if consumed in moderate amounts, implying that fat people have only themselves to blame for their condition.

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Unfortunately, that’s not the complete truth. Statistics show that up to 20% of obese people are actually healthy and never cause any additional burden to the health care system. They live a normal life and reach the average life expectancy. Out of 150 million people in the USA today who suffer from preventable diseases related to food consumption, almost 60% are actually normal weight individuals. That’s because the main culprit is not obesity, it is actually Metabolic Syndrome. This group of metabolic abnormalities causes diabetes, hypertension, lipid abnormalities, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, cancer and even dementia. The majority of patients having these abnormalities are the so called TOFI – Thin Outside, Fat Inside. The subcutaneous fat deposition in obese individuals is not what’s causing heart attacks and strokes, but it is actually the visceral fat which surrounds the internal organs, found either in fat or thin people.

WHY HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP IS SO BAD FOR YOU

The human body is usually like a finely tuned engine, which if you put in it the right fuel it will utilize it in various ways in order to get the energy it needs. The body’s main fuel is glucose. It is absorbed in our intestine and it finds its way into the bloodstream where it is detected by cell receptors. Insulin is released by your pancreas which allows glucose to enter your cells and be used as energy through certain metabolic reactions. There are two additional hormones which play a role in food metabolism and hunger: Ghrelin which in simple words makes you hungry and Leptin which makes you feel full. Normally, the presence of food in your system decreases the release of ghrelin (to make you feel less hungry) and increases the release of leptin (to make you feel full). Therefore you know when you ‘ve had enough so you can stop eating.

Rat on the left has decreased levels of Leptin - (Source)

Unlike most other sugars which are broken down by intestinal enzymes, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), similar to any other poison, can only be metabolized by the liver. But this creates certain direct problems. HFCS, on its way to the liver, passes through your bloodstream in a way we can call a ‘stealth mode’. It is not detected immediately as a potential fuel by your cells and therefore your ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels remain high and leptin (satiety hormone) levels remain low. Your body does not realize that you have already consumed a huge amount of calories and therefore does not control your appetite. Then your liver breaks HFCS down and a large amount of it is ultimately converted to FAT in a process called ‘De novo Lipogenesis’.

To make things worse, during the last years scientists have made a worrisome discovery about LDL, our ‘bad’ cholesterol. They found out that there are two main types. Type A LDL is not related to an increased cardiovascular risk. On the other hand, type B LDL has been proven to increase directly your chances of having a heart attack or a stroke. They also discovered that type B LDL is mainly increased when you consume extra carbohydrates. In other words, the more sugar you put in your body, the higher your chances of cardiovascular disease.

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THE SUGAR CONSPIRACY WHICH PROVED TO BE TRUE

When the first research started coming out about the horrible effects of sugar, the industry Lobby made efforts to hide the truth from the public. The Sugar Lobby uses exactly the same methods the Tobacco Industries were using for years: misleading advertising, paying scientists to publish research in their favour or discrediting any scientists who published any research against their product. They tried to put the blame on the excess fat in our diets. They used their Lobby connections with organizations such as the USDA and the AHA (American Heart Association) to convince people that they should eat a diet high in carbs but low on fat. And Americans did exactly that. Low-fat products filled the market and the total fat intake of the average US citizen ended up being only 5 grams more than it was 50 years ago. The result? Obesity and cardiovascular disease rates became higher than ever before.

Misleading Advertising my the Sugar Industry - (Source)

Probably the worst culprits of the Sugar Industry, Coca-Cola and Pepsi used every method they could to make you consume more of their products. By increasing the amount of sugar in their drinks, they were also able to add (purposefully) more salt. Your kidneys excrete all this excess salt by making you urinate more. The more you pee, the more water you lose. The thirst centre in your brain detects this decreased water in your system and makes you thirstier. As a result, you end up drinking even more of that Coca-cola, initiating a vicious circle.

But on the 12th of September 2016, an amazing article was published on the Journal of the American Medical Association. This article examined all the documents which have been published the last few decades about the effect of sugar to our body. The results of this research were not shocking to anyone. The Sugar Lobby, using the ‘same playbook the tobacco industry has pioneered', purposefully tried to alter the results of research on sugar to its favor. According to the article, even Harvard Scientists were secretly ‘funded’ by the Sugar Lobby to publish papers which showed no relationship between sugar and cardiovascular disease. As a result sugar transformed from the fuel of our bodies, to the new poisonous drug of our times which will probably end up killing either you or someone you care about.

-CT.

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Sources

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2548255

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceFyF9px20Y

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