The sugar wars rage on.

California physician and councilman, Dr Jeff Ritterman, is proposing a tax on sugared drinks to be levied on retailers.

If successful this could become a model for the rest of the country.

There are many who are at risk for diabetes who simply ignore the fact or don’t believe the threat of illness.

In fact, 79 million Americans may be prediabetic and don’t even know it.

Poor lifestyle choices, being overweight and lack of exercise are the contributing factors to a disease with overwhelming and life threatening implications.

If your doctor has diagnosed you as pre-diabetic it means that everything you are doing is leading you to develop this dangerous condition.

Work with your physician to make the necessary changes toward your best health.

Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has proposed new legislation which would ban ‘super-size’ sugary drinks served in cups greater than 16 ounces.

Many applaud the efforts as one solution to the growing problem of obesity and type 2 diabetes which is crippling the health care system.

There have been studies that have found correlations between food portion sizes and rates of obesity, blood pressure and heart disease. A report by the CDC found portions increased 75 percent between 1977 and 1991 – unsurprisingly, we’ve observed huge jumps in obesity rates as well.
Studies have shown that people with more on their plates eat nearly 50 percent more than people who are served smaller portions.

This is a small victory for consumers who, finally aware of the dangers of high fructose corn syrup, will continue to be able to identify it in the products they buy.

Michael M. Landa, director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the F.D.A., denied the petition, saying that the term “sugar” is used only for food “that is solid, dried and crystallized.”

“HFCS is an aqueous solution sweetener derived from corn after enzymatic hydrolysis of cornstarch, followed by enzymatic conversion of glucose (dextrose) to fructose,” the letter stated. “Thus, the use of the term ‘sugar’ to describe HFCS, a product that is a syrup, would not accurately identify or describe the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties.”

The Corn Refiners Association is afraid that consumers will avoid the product, which has received a bad reputation, under the pretext of “false information”, namely that corn syrup is natural and is the same as sugar.

The fact is that it is NOT natural , it is manufactured in a lab and can harm to people who can not properly metabolize the ingredient.

And further, to argue that HFCS is the same as sugar only calls into question the efficacy of sugar in the human diet.

There are many who would postulate that there already exists an overabundance of sugar which is causing obesity and Type 2 diabetes in epidemic proportions.

Kids are going to have to make serious calorie cuts to avoid obesity as they get older.

If current trends continue, childhood obesity will transition into adult obesity.

In setting the Healthy People 2020 goals, the feds were more pragmatic. They hope to reduce the childhood obesity rate by 10 percent of the 2005-2008 levels, to 14.6 percent of children and teens. Getting there would require kids to cut 23 calories a day, on average. Teens, who are more likely to be obese than young children, would have to cut more.

The good news is that obesity seems to be leveling off but even if the obesity epidemic has peaked, children are heavier than they have ever been in human history.

Gastric bypass surgery may sound drastic but diabetes has become a serious health issue for millions of Americans.

The health care costs alone pose a threat the system not to mention the toll the disease takes on families and society at large.

Getting this epidemic under control should be a top priority, however, is life threatening surgery the answer?

The advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted 20 to 2 to recommend approval of Qnexa, a “new” obesity drug that is simply the combination of two older medications, phentermine (the “phen” of phen-fen”) and topiramate (Topamax).

The old diet drug (phentermine), combined with an older anti-seizure medication (Topamax) have concerning side effects, including increased heart rate, heart attacks, and birth defects such as cleft lip.

Every year the average American consumes 24 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, 24 pounds of ice cream, 53 gallons of soda (or a gallon each week), 24 pounds of artificial sweeteners, 2.7 pounds of salt, 90,700 mg of caffeine, and about 2,700 calories a day.

Does a pill really address this behavior?

By 2020, over 50% of the US adult population will have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, with annual costs approaching $500 billion. By 2030, total annual economic costs of cardiovascular disease in the US are predicted to exceed $1 trillion. By 2030, globally we will spend $47 trillion; yes trillion, to address the effects of chronic lifestyle-driven disease.

Prescription medication for lifestyle disease has failed to bend the obesity and disease curve. Statins have been recently found to increase the risk of diabetes in women by 48%. And large data reviews by independent international scientists from the Cochrane Collaborative found that statins only work to prevent second heart attacks, not first heart attacks, which means they are not helpful and most likely harmful for 75% of those who take them.

Medication and surgery are not the answer to the growing obesity epidemic.

Lifestyle change is the safest, cost effective and most efficient way to address this national crisis.

Weight loss surgery to cure diabetes is an absurd notion which fails to address the real problem behind this disease; lifestyle choices.

Dr. Mark Hyman has painstakingly studied this epidemic and offers real solutions for curing diabetes and also addresses the drawbacks to radical solutions such as gastric bypass surgery:

A report on the effectiveness of weight-loss surgery published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that within 3 to 5 years after laparoscopic gastric banding, as many as one-third of patients are not able to maintain weight loss due to noncompliance with a prescribed diet and other issues. Plus, the complications stemming from lap-band surgery were as high as 30 percent.

We also know that weight-loss surgery is not without risks. Altering the gastrointestinal tract can lead to nutritional deficiencies that require lifelong monitoring and supplementation of calcium, vitamin B12, folate, multivitamins, iron, and thiamine. And the psychological risks of these surgeries are often underplayed. In 2010, a study published in the American Journal of Medicine showed a dramatic increase in suicide among patients who had bariatric surgery, most occurring within three years following the surgery. (1)

Even more disturbing is the rise in overweight teens choosing weight-loss surgery. Since the late ‘90s, the number of weight-loss procedures performed on teenagers has skyrocketed. (2) Some studies show the mean age of these young patients is just 16 years old with some as young as 12! (3) Very few studies have looked at the long-term ramifications of these surgeries. What kind of problems are we passing on to our youth?

Does this costly and risky procedure truly address the root causes of Type 2 Diabetes?

A new study finds that white rice is linked to increased incidence of diabetes.

Although not a cause and effect there is a an association between the two.

n the study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston looked at four previous studies examining the link between eating white rice and the risk of Type 2 diabetes — two done in Asian countries (China and Japan) and two in Western countries (the U.S. and Australia). The researchers said they were looking to see whether the link between eating white rice and developing diabetes was stronger among people in Asia, who tend to eat more white rice than Westerners.

The studies, which ranged in length from four to 22 years, included a total of about 352,000 participants; none had diabetes at the start. Over the course of the studies, 13,284 people developed diabetes.

The information and alarm stirred up by the gluten craze is overwhelming.

Is it an industry gimmick to drive up specialty food prices or a real issue affecting millions of Americans? And if so, why?

The “why” is the real question.

Why, all of the sudden, are millions of Americans suddenly afflicted with celiac disease, wheat allergies, gluten intolerance and gluten sensitivity?

In addition to an increase of type 2 diabetes, and obesity, diseases aggravated by inflammation are also on the rise.

Dr. Mark Hyman M.D. has written a great article that goes to the real problem which has been blamed on gluten; the wheat.

This is not to say that there are not real health issues linked to gluten, however, the “new” wheat is causing problems, too.

Super Starch, Super Gluten and the Super Drug that we are all ingesting in all kinds of food products are to blame, according to Hyman.

Scientifically created “Franken Food” engineered by Agri-business giants within the last 50 years have created a food product much unlike that which humans were designed to consume.

The Bible says, “Give us this day our daily bread”. Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the Einkorn, heirloom, Biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans never eat.
Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize – it promised to feed millions of starving around the world. Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick.
The first major difference of this dwarf wheat is that it contains very high levels of a super starch called amylopectin A. This is how we get big fluffy Wonder Bread and Cinnabons.

If you are suffering from weight gain, inflammation, diabetes or prediabetes consider your diet and how you can avoid toxic wheat.