This also shows the true evil of the TTP and TTIP trade deals: corporations can sue any government if their laws affect the corporation's profits. Pure evil. The article has the example of Mexico being sued for their protective laws.
About 6 weeks ago I stopped ingesting sugar, to the extent that is practically possible. No candy & cakes, no sweet drinks and very diligent reading of labels on the non-obvious stuff. I do eat fruit but not processed into juice.<p>Dropped 4 kg, everything tastes better, no energy drop at 4pm and the cravings disappeared within first two days. Friends report similar results.<p>This was also much easier than my previous attempts at "cutting down" sugar.
I despise the corn lobby more. They ensure the high tariffs on imported sugar in order to protect the corn prices to produce corn syrup instead of using raw sugar. Only the US has soft drinks made with HFCS simply because of the tariff on imported sugar.
It's "interesting" to see the same methods that the tabacco lobby used are used again. We as a society haven't spent the past time in defending ourselves or our institutions any better then back in those days. Sad Indeed...
I'm not sure if there should be a tax on sugar. But I definitely think that products should have a large visible colorful graphic on the front showing the amount of sugar content.. separate from the basic black and white nutritional info label.
I cut back my sugar intake for half a year (bread, chocolate, sodas, etc.) and felt worse, my digestion becoming more erratic and irregular. Right now, I am enjoying a couple of pieces of delicious chocolate while laughing about the people who demonize certain classes of food. We know embarrassingly little about our digestion. Who knows, in 30 years we will say proteins are the devil and then we go back to hating fats. You have to go absolutely crazy on sugars to cause diabetes. We are talking about 'regularly skipping meals and then compensating by eating a couple of chocolate bars' crazy.
The purpose of sugar is to have a spoilage-resistant renewable commodity capable of filling and refilling cargo ships to a net wealth density greater than most any choice having similar features at the time, over three hundred years ago.<p>To put this in perspective, that was about the same time that colonies in North America were being founded also by multinational corporations for the benefit of multinational corporations, often funded by venture capitalists among the royalty of Europe.<p>Sugar is a truly fungible material, exchangable at prevailing rates in any port. A single type of cargo that could pay its own way just about anywhere, allowing relatively greater voyage flexibility, in a world where logistics has always played a significant part.<p>While being the trader's or marketer's dream; concentrated chemical crystals which are habit forming in some way, with everyone everywhere being a potential repeat retail customer for "life".<p>The enthusiasm for this wealth from many different directions would be expected to have yielded very effective lobbyists to officials around the world for many generations by now. Once consumption has leveled to the sustainable growth rate, excess gains can more likely be made through manipulation.<p>Centuries of that has ended up supporting very strong plantation-type economies, often to the destruction of large numbers of a variety of different species, with human suffering very prominently included.<p>Continuous removal of wealth from Haiti, mandated long term US-Cuban non-relationship, and loss of Everglades wildlife by the millions are just some of the obvious casualties.<p>You, the consumer make it all possible.<p>It's not just for sweetening your coffee in the morning.<p>Now don't get me started on coffee . . .
White sugar is crack. Highly addictive, creating fidgets who can't focus for 5 minutes chasing the next instant gratification. White sugar and wheat shake up one's blood sugar like no other.<p>On the one side, I am wondering that people are still consuming sugar—the last years more and more news/facts/studies pop up putting sugar in the right light. On the other side, addicted people usually say about their drugs that they make them feel good and that they are not addicted and keep consuming. But one big problem that it's quite hard to resist sugar. It's key ingredient of most products in a super market.
I don't feel very comfortable with this "anti-sugar" campaign. In a recent past, the villain was fat, now is sugar. I don't think both of them is the problem, the problem is a life without sports and workout. And sugar is the best energy source for the brain, as far as I know.