Sugar and the 'Sugar Blues' - Why sugar is not healthy.

Sugar is extremely unhealthy when it has been refined and cooked...which is almost all sugar not found in fruits.

Sugar is said to be a lot like cocaine and other drugs, that there are cartels built around, and the entire thing is an industry of destruction for us.

Not all sugars are equal, and people don't realize that sugar that comes from an apple, although it is called sugar, is extremely different than sugar that comes from a piece of cake. Once you cook sugar, it is completely different.

Anything that is refined, for example these sugars, is taken out of context, so if you take sugar cane or an apple, juice it and then drink, that is good for you because it is a whole food kind of product where all the minerals, as a complete package, are in the sugar; you get good fruit sugar with all vitamins and minerals and the rest of the package, and the body assimilates all things together.

When you refine sugar, you cook it, and you take just the sucrose part, just the white refined part, it destabilizes your body intensely.

Fred Busch Yoga offers information that is not meant to change the way you eat, but to it is so that you uplift your level of information as 'Knowledge is Power.'

Diabetes Rate Doubles Worldwide

The Rate of Diabetes has doubled over the past 25 years. It is an epidemic and shows no sign or abating. Actually the opposite, it seems like it is spreading to ever younger children who become obese and ineffective in life before the age of 10.

We have the answers to cure diabetes and stop the epidemic. We must eat less refined sugar, refined flour, refined rice, less sodas, less fried foods, less empty calories. We need to eat more green foods, more fruits, more simple vegetarian foods.

We should immediately tax all sugar foods like we do for cigarettes simply to factor in the impact that diabetes related health care costs have on the overall health care budget. We can solve this one! It is simple! Tax sugar and educate people and make it harder for companies to poison people with junk foods... especially children.

BBC REPORTS Today:

The number of adults with diabetes in the world has more than doubled since 1980, a study in the Lancet says.

Researchers from Imperial College London and Harvard University in the US analysed data from 2.7m people across the world, using statistical techniques to project a worldwide figure.

The total number of people with all forms of the disease - which can be fatal - has risen from 153m to 347m.

The authors called for better detection and treatment to combat the rise.

Its authors said 70% of the rise was down to people living longer.

The rise has been most pronounced in the Pacific Islands. In the Marshall Islands a third of all women have the condition.

Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, said: "Diabetes is becoming more common almost everywhere in the world.

"Unless we develop better programmes for detecting people with elevated blood sugar and helping them to control their weight, diabetes will continue to impose a major burden on health systems around the world."

High Fructose Corn Syrup name changing to fool the public

It is really amazing that it is legal to do stuff like what the corn industry is attempting to ask the FDA for. They are simply asking permission to change the name of high-fructose corn syrup to 'corn sugar'. This is a blatant and unacceptable attempt to fool the public into eating foods with high fructose corn syrup without knowing it.

Refined sugars like high fructose corn syrup is really dangerous and leads to obesity and diabetes directly. The FDA should not even consider this request. It is criminal in my opinion.

A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Would high-fructose corn syrup, by any other name, have sweeter appeal?

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make the syrup, has been trying to improve the image of the much maligned sweetener with ad campaigns promoting it as a natural ingredient made from corn. Now, the group has petitioned the United States Food and Drug Administration to start calling the ingredient “corn sugar,” arguing that a name change is the only way to clear up consumer confusion about the product.

“Clearly the name is confusing consumers,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group, in an interview. “Research shows that ‘corn sugar’ better communicates the amount of calories, the level of fructose and the sweetness in this ingredient.”

According to the market research firm NPD Group, about 58 percent of Americans say they are concerned that high-fructose corn syrup poses a health risk.

Some scientists over the years have speculated that high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to obesity by somehow disrupting normal metabolic function, but the research has been inconclusive. As a result, most leading scientists and nutrition experts agree that in terms of health, the effect of high-fructose corn syrup is the same as regular sugar, and that too much of either ingredient is bad for your health.

Marion Nestle, a professor in New York University’s department of nutrition and a longtime food industry critic, says that Americans consume too much of all types of sugar, but that there is no meaningful biochemical difference between table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.

“I’m not eager to help the corn refiners sell more of their stuff,” Dr. Nestle wrote in an e-mail. “But you have to feel sorry for them. High-fructose corn syrup is the new trans fat. Everyone thinks it’s poison, and food companies are getting rid of it as fast as they can.”

Dr. Nestle says she thinks the plural “corn sugars” is a better description of high-fructose corn syrup, which is actually a mixture of glucose and fructose. But she agrees that the corn refiners “have lots of reasons to want the change.”

“Even I have to admit that it’s not an unreasonable one,” Dr. Nestle said.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the health advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, said he thought the term “high-fructose corn syrup” had misled many into thinking the sweetener was composed mainly of fructose, a simple sugar found in honey and fruit.

“Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are nutritionally the same,’’ said Dr. Jacobson, who has a doctorate in microbiology. “I don’t know if ‘corn sugar’ is the best term, but it’s better than ‘high-fructose corn syrup.’ ”

High-fructose corn syrup, which came into widespread use in the 1970s, isn’t particularly high in fructose, but was so named to distinguish it from ordinary, glucose-containing corn syrup, according to a report in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose (also known as table sugar) contain about the same amount of glucose and fructose. In fact, one commonly used version of the ingredient known as HFCS-42 actually contains less fructose (42 percent) than table sugar, which has 50 percent fructose, according to the report.

“The name is confusing, and consumers don’t understand that it has the same calories as sugar,” said Ms. Erickson, of the Corn Refiners’ Association. “They also think it’s sweeter tasting. That’s why the alternate name provides clarity for consumers when it comes to the ingredient composition and helps them better understand what’s in their foods.”

Table sugar comes primarily from sugar cane or sugar beets. High-fructose corn syrup is made essentially by soaking corn kernels to extract corn starch, and using enzymes to turn the glucose in the starch into fructose. The ingredient is a favorite of food makers for practical reasons. Compared with sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t mask flavors, has a lower freezing point and retains moisture better, which is useful in making foods like chewy granola bars. And because the corn crop in the United States is heavily subsidized, high-fructose corn syrup is also cheap. As a result, it’s now used in so many foods, from crackers to soft drinks, that it has become one of the biggest sources of calories in the American diet.

But the public perception of high-fructose corn syrup as unhealthful has prompted many food companies to stop using it in their products, including Hunt’s Ketchup, Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice and Wheat Thins crackers.

The F.D.A. has six months to respond to the name-change petition. If the agency accepts it, the decision on whether to allow the name “corn sugar” on food labels may take another 12 to 18 months.

Although food label changes aren’t common, the F.D.A. has allowed name changes in the past. The ingredient first called “low erucic acid rapeseed oil” was changed to “canola oil” in the 1980s. More recently, the F.D.A. allowed prunes to be called “dried plums.”

“It’s rare that food ingredient labels are changed, and when they are it’s always been to provide clarity to consumers,” Ms. Erickson said. “This is a classic case for consumers to better understand an ingredient.”