Bad news if you have a sweet tooth – sugar is offically ‘toxic’

Remember that episode of The Simpsons where sugar is banned and the residents of Springfield try to go cold turkey? It could soon become a reality as a new study outlining the dangers of sugar has a team of leading health experts saying that it should be controlled in the same way as tobacco and alcohol.

The Irish Independent reports today that three scientists from the University of California in San Francisco are arguing that high-calorie, sweetened food is indirectly responsible for 35 million deaths worldwide every single year. The experts claim that sugar is causing conditions such a heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Professors Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis have called for serious restrictions and controls on sugar because they believe it has the ability to cause severe harm to the public.

They said that the levels of sugar consumed in the West altered metabolism, raised blood pressure significantly, disrupted hormone signalling and caused lots of damage to the liver.

The negative impact sugar has on the human body is similar to the effects of driving too much alcohol.

“As long as the public think sugar is just ‘empty calories’, we have no chance,” said Professor Lustig.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids and good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates. But sugar is toxic beyond its calories,” he warned.

It is believed that the worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled in the last 50 years, which in turn has caused an epidemic of obesity across the world.

What is making sugar so dangerous? According to the experts it is fructose, a small sugar molecule that is regularly added to processed food. Fructose is known for the harmful effects that it can have on the human body.

In their report, the experts proposed adding taxes to processed foods that contained any form of added sugar or placing age limits with regards to the purchase of sugary drinks.

Would you pay extra just to get your sugar fix?