An American Thinks So.

Now I'm as quick to dismiss your usual health-scare as the next red meat eating, quite looking forward to easter thank you, hot buttered crumpet munching sceptic but some of this stuff is

FYI the NYT is pay-walled so I couldn't read it via that link. However! They allow a limited number of articles to be read if you come via a search engine. I typed "is sugar toxic" into Google and clicked on the top hit, which is the article you link.

It's quite long - I'll come back when I've finished reading it all, which I shall because it's a topic I care about.

Got to page 4...looks like pcernie is going to have to reconsider his beverage of choice.

Well maybe if he is ever bitten then the animal or person who bites him will die from being poisoned.

In America, where it's more or less in everything, I'm sure it's possible to be at toxic levels before you finish breakfast.

I suspect that they use so much High fructose corn syrup in most breakfast cereals that you could be right. When I have cereals now I do not even add sugar as it is usually sweet enough.

Even water and oxygen can be toxic. It all depends on the dose so moderation is the key.

Have you tried telling pcernie about drinking coke in moderation?

If sugar was toxic, my father-in-law would have died years ago.

I used to have a bad coke habit.

There are smokers who live to be 100 years old, while many others get cancer and die young.

I have to say that "eating excessive quantities of unnatural sh!t may be bad to your health" is no surprise. It makes me cry when I see parents feeding their children such obviously toxic brightly coloured unnatural obscenities, and considering it "normal". It's about as "normal" as a red hot poker up the ar$e...

Did it do you any harm? Okay, so perhaps you were always denied that stuff as a child, in which case I'd like to go on record and say that I don't think it did me any harm.

Mark

The problem is, the high fructose corn syrup is really bad for you, but "they" are trying to get cane sugar a bad name, so that they can replace it.

Look to see them calling it high fructose corn sugar, then complaining that cane sugar is just called sugar and rebranding again...

I am trying to cut back on all my sugar intake, but I have switched to unrefined sugar which is 'slightly' better for me. I only use it for tea and coffee, and baking.

The gist of the article is that sustained unnaturally high intake of fructose ("normal" sugar and corn syrup both contain fructose) causes fatty deposits in the liver which leads to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. This can be replicated in rodents, and there are very strong statistical correlations between sugar intake and death from these diseases. The proposed mechanisms are described in the article, along with references to relevant trials and research.

You wont know if you've been damaged unless you develop symptoms or have a scan, and for me personally I've never eaten sugary things except on special occasions. As a child I could tell if it was a special occasion because there would be cake, crisps and fizzy pop. Sweets and pop are like cocaine and alcohol for kids, and I've always maintained that they should not form part of anyone's daily diet.

The important point to note is that the toxic effects are from chronic over-indulgence. If you stop consuming excess quantities, then your liver quite quickly returns to normal.

Pre-industrial times, the only fructose we would consume would be in the form of fruit. We'd glut on it during the season, and preserve smaller quantities to eat throughout the year.

Note that one 330ml can of Coke contains about 10g of fructose. That's the same as 1.1Kg of sweet juicy nectarines. I think eating that much fruit in a day would definitely count as gluttony.