More cautionary info about sugar and soda

Years ago in the storage room that magically became the faculty room when the higher-ups realized no such room existed in the new junior high school, the science teacher grabbed the shaker of sodium-free salt substitute I had just sprinkled on my lunch of Brussels sprouts and soy chunks and read the list of ingredients. He smirked and said, “You know this stuff can kill you.”

His statement stymied all other conversation. The eyes of the six or so other teachers fell directly on me.

I bowed my head to my bowl, took in a forkful of food, and — to heighten the suspense — chewed far longer than needed. After I swallowed, I kept my eyes on my food and offered a reply.

“So can water.”

My words amused everybody except the science teacher, but later I found out their laughter was for the wrong reason. They were thinking about drowning; I was thinking about the few times ill-informed marathon runners got so hyper-hydrated by drinking gallons of water before their race that they died of heart failure during it.

Yes, that salt substitute I still use on my foods could in fact be the death of me. But at one meal I would probably have to use about half of the 11-ounce container (a full shaker lasts me about four months) and then exercise as intensely as I ever have for god knows how long.

While that sequence of events is highly unlikely, here’s one that isn’t: consuming 17 ounces of soda a day.

Doing that, according to a study of more than 450,000 adults from 10 European countries, increases your chance of dying prematurely.

Unlike the scenario with the salt-substitute, about a can and a half of soda a day is a realistic amount, which brings us back to the point I tried to make years ago in the faculty room: It’s the dose that makes the poison.

Titled the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition and recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the soda study factored out the influence of physical activity (or lack thereof), body mass index, education, smoking, and diet, before determining that the subjects who drank 17 or more ounces of the stuff a day had a higher risk of death than those in the study who consumed “hardly any.”

(Two notes: For the purposes of the study, “hardly any” was defined as fewer than one glass a month. And, interestingly enough, a higher risk was also recorded with the subjects who consumed sugar-free sodas. Commenting upon that, however, falls outside the scope of this article and merits an article of its own.)

The correlation between moderate soda consumption and a higher risk of death could serve as a partial explanation for why another study using data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and hypertension shows that a positive health trend is petering out.

In each year from 1999 to 2010, deaths from heart disease dropped. Unfortunately, the decrease since then has fizzled out to nearly a flat line.

While lead researcher Dr. Sadiya Khan, assistant professor of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, feels that the nature of the study does not allow her or any professional in her field to blame the ever increasing obesity rate for the decrease in the reduction of heart-disease deaths, to the non-professional the link should appear more than likely. Just as likely is that the ever increasing obesity rate has created more cases of diabetes and high blood pressure and caused the reduction in the number of deaths from stroke to level off — as well as increased the rate of death from high blood pressure.

And the single substance that seems to have started all this is sugar — or at least the food producers’ ubiquitous use of it in virtually all processed foods.

The food producers are no fools. They know what Phil Maffetone wrote in September on his website is indeed true.

“Sugar is a drug.”

I encourage you to visit his website and read the article titled the same in full. While Maffetone concedes that the American Psychiatric Association has not created an official definition or diagnosis of sugar addiction, he argues that sugar’s immediate and potent effects do indeed act like a drug.

His position is based in part on studies performed on animals. In one, rats that were fed sugar for 28 days and then consumed none for the next 14 days reacted similarly to alcoholics abstaining from alcohol.

Moreover, Maffetone offers that “intermittent administration of sugar to rats leads to binge use, similar to when they are given heroin and cocaine, and creates physical impairment of the brain and nervous system associated with addiction.”

In short, for water or that salt substitute I use to act as a poison, either has to be consumed in impractical amounts. It’s clear that the same cannot be said of sugar.