Is Sugar the New Tobacco? Americans consume around 100 pounds of sugar per year. The daily consumption of sugar has increased worldwide by 46% in the last 30 years (“Sugar”). The Netflix film “Sugar Coated” shows what people have been ignoring over the years about sugar. “As obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates skyrocket and doctors treat the first generation of children suffering from fatty liver disease, the sugar industry is under siege,” (“Sugar”). This means that more diseases are starting to come while the sugar industry is only growing.
Also, this problem doesn’t just affect health, it affects everyday life. “This problem affects you at home, this problem affects you at work, this problem affects your business deals, and this problem ultimately affects your country and the world. It’s not just obesity and kids,”(Spicer). We would not have been informed of these dangerous facts if it weren’t for the investigators. Muckraking has helped improve health, safety, and lots of other things. Muckraking does exist as demonstrated by the Netflix film “Sugar Coated” directed by Michele Hozer.
Robert Lustig made a big contribution to the movie. He was one of the main muckrakers alongside Yoni Freedhoff, Gary Taubes, and Cristin Kearns. Robert Lustig is from Brooklyn, NY. He went to highschool at Stuyvesant High School and graduated from MIT in 1976. He received his Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1980. He is a neuroendocrinologist. He has basic and clinical training relative to hypothalamic development, anatomy, and function. He moved to California in 2001, and then he went to Memphis, TN and was charged with the endocrine care of many children.
He eventually found out that the children that survived hypothalami were turning out massively obese. After all the research he had done on this problem he was led to explore the role of fructose as a mediator of chronic disease and caloric consumption. He now has a video on youtube, “Sugar – the bitter truth. ” He is the main muckraker in this story because he has a lot of experience in the sugar industry, and has come up with a hypothesis and has written two novels and a healthy cookbook on his work. Lustig currently lives in San Francisco and his still working very hard (“Robert”).
A lot of interesting facts and points were given throughout the film. One scary fact that the film revealed is that doctors are now treating the first generation of children suffering from fatty liver disease. This disease is caused by eating too much sugar and it has recently come about. Does this mean more sugar based diseases will come? The goal this movie is trying to reach, is hopefully to convince enough people that something starts to change. For example, that doctors will start tracking sugar more often in people’s diet and hopefully to trim the amount down.
The movie’s impact on people being affected by this is huge. People now realize how big this issue is and they are responding the right way. The movie did a good job with convincing people the truth is harsh in this situation. The movie talks about how much sugar Americans really eat on a daily basis. Moderation is the word the film used for average. The movie said, “Moderation is 6-9 tablespoons of sugar a day. America is at 19. 5 tablespoons a day. We are consuming it in excess,” (“Sugar”). The last sentence is the most important.
America is consuming sugar in excess. We are eating more sugar than average. Another good point the film made was, “There are 56 names for sugar,” (“Sugar”). Lustig wrote a book with that quote as the title. There are 56 names for sugar so that it can hide in the ingredient section on food boxes. The big idea that this film was trying to expose is that sugar is being eaten a lot faster than it should and that it is dangerous to people’s health. Another interesting thing they found was that sugar is made up of two molecules, glucose and fructose.
Glucose is the kind that spreads all throughout your body. Fructose goes straight to the liver. The liver eventually gets flooded and overwhelmed with fructose. The problem is that the whole time people were blaming the obesity problem on dietary fats. The science behind this is that when the liver gets too much sugar or fructose it gets overwhelmed and starts turning the sugar into fat to get it out of the system. This means doctors saw a lot of fat and less sugar so the doctors blamed it on fat. When doctors started blaming it on fat, more low-fat foods started coming about.
Guess how companies make low-fat meals taste better? Sugar This film has inspired people to eat less sugar and try to eat healthier foods to stay in shape, but is this the only impact? Japan is not waiting for the problem to progress. Japan has started to take control of the country’s health problems because the realization that the problems are spiraling out of control. Japan has realized how people are gaining weight and don’t want it to get worse. To keep people healthy, Japan introduced a new law where they have to get the girth of the nation’s waistlines measured.
Another way this film has made an impact is by convincing people that this is a true problem that needs to be taken care of. People are getting convinced because of all the reviews on the internet. One of the comments say, “The sugar is today’s tobacco problem. Scary, but well worth watching,” (Brown). This person believes the theory of sugar being the new tobacco because both are addicting, and both affect people’s health in a negative way. Another comment was, “sugar is a threat to society,” (Brown).
This person believes that sugar is dangerous towards our society because it is making people unhealthier, gain weight, and making people addicted. People are responding the right way. People believe that this is a real problem that needs to start being prevented before it gets more out of hand than it already is. The film “Sugar Coated” is a great film because it inspires one to be more healthy and try to get sugar more out of one’s diet. It inspires people by telling, sometimes harsh, true facts about what sugar can do to your body.
After watching it, it makes people want to take sugar completely out of one’s diet because of the things the film proves it can do to people’s health. One of the facts that was mentioned really hit a lot of people hard. “If you drink one soda a day, your risk of having diabetes goes up 29%,” (“Sugar”). This makes people upset because a lot of people drink at least one soda a day and makes the people who know this think more about the health they have. Teenagers are a bad age to be having a large intake of sugar because the bodies are still developing at that age.
The film states that, “Teenagers consume on average 30 to 41 TEASPOONS of total sugars PER DAY,” (“Sugar”). Teenagers aren’t supposed to make the developing bodies go through that much trouble just to get the sugar out of the livers system. The big picture is that people’s bodies cannot take the amount of sugar America is consuming, which is way above average. The film tries to inform people that it’s not okay to keep going on as America is. People are glad these muckrakers were able to inform people about this strong subject. This shows that investigative journalism, muckraking, does still exist.