Rob Ferrett and Veronica Rueckert talk with a physician who says you can improve your health by understanding where to find hidden sugar in your diet. Then we’ll take a look at today’s news and learn why some people actively avoid the internet.
Featured in this Show
-
Author Says Americans Are ‘At War’ With Food Industry
A popular author and pediatrician said that he believes the American people are now “at war with the food industry” as many struggle with unhealthy food choices that are oftentimes cheap and tasty.
It’s not a war that anyone chose to fight, but Robert Lustig said it’s the product of an industry aiming to do what all industries do: make money.
Lustig said the economics goes like this: Companies want to sell food that costs them the least. On the other hand, they want consumers to buy a lot of it. So, they use cheap commodities, like corn and wheat, with the addition of sugar, which is also cheap and addictive. During the past 30 years, he said sugar has infiltrated many of the foods we consume every day.
“We have doubled our sugar intake,” he said. “It has been added now to every food very specifically because the food industry knows when they do, we buy more.”
It turns out, though, that a lot of the sugar that we consume is hidden in products that people don’t necessarily know have sugar, such as tomato sauce and bread. Only one half of the sugar people consume comes from obvious things like soft drinks and candy.
Lustig said he sees sugar as largely responsible for the obesity epidemic and high of rates of metabolic syndrome in the country. As a result, he is a proponent of cutting added sugar out of one’s diet.
Some in the medical community have raised questions about the scientific evidence that sugar is at the heart of America’s medical problems and that it should be avoided. Lustig defended his claim.
“This is about science, I do not talk about anecdotes,” he said. “The science says this is a problem … we cannot fix healthcare until we fix metabolic syndrome and we cannot fix metabolic syndrome until we fix sugar.”
-
Sugar Has 56 Names
Doctor Robert Lustig, M.D. says that “In the interest of selling more product and giving it a longer shelf life, the food industry has during the last few decades made some choices that were great for their bottom line and terrible for our health.” He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Fat Chance and President of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition.
-
Why People Stay Offline
About 60 million Americans don’t access the internet–some because of cost and access, but many because they don’t want to. A researcher shares new information about how and why we go online.
Episode Credits
- Rob Ferrett Host
- Veronica Rueckert Host
- Galen Druke Producer
- Dr. Robert Lustig , M.D. Guest
- Kathryn Zickuhr Guest
Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.
