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LifestyleHealth & Wellness

6 hidden truths about sugar, and how it's making us ill

Sugar is to children what alcohol is to grown-ups. There’s no good sugar, or fruit juice. Sugar, not obesity, is driving disease such as diabetes. Outspoken anti-sugar advocate Dr Robert Lustig reveals some not-so-sweet facts

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Dr Robert Lustig advocates that sugar in all its forms is harmful to our health. Photo: Corbis
Jeanette Wang

Toxic, poison, a substance of abuse: these are words you probably don’t associate with sugar, but Dr Robert Lustig would convince you otherwise.

56 names for sugar the food industry uses to hide how much is in their products

Lustig, a professor of paediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, emerged as an outspoken leader of the global “anti-sugar” movement to improve global health when a presentation he made at the university in July 2009 went viral on YouTube. The video, called Sugar: The Bitter Truth, has been viewed more than 6.3 million times.

Professor of paediatrics at the University of California Dr Robert Lustig was recently in Hong Kong to speak at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference at the Conrad Hotel in Admiralty. Photo: Credit Suisse
Professor of paediatrics at the University of California Dr Robert Lustig was recently in Hong Kong to speak at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference at the Conrad Hotel in Admiralty. Photo: Credit Suisse

Recently in Hong Kong speaking at Credit Suisse’s Annual Asian Investment Conference at Conrad Hotel, Lustig emphasised the huge role the food industry plays in hiding the truths about sugar to the general public.

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“The food industry don’t want you to know all of this because if you did, you would shop and consume very differently, and they don’t want you to because they’re making a lot of money,” asserts Lustig.

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“It’s all about the money. And to be honest it’s OK to be about the money, but the food industry have to make money by selling food that is healthful, not by selling food that poisons people.”

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