Heart
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My father used to eat a fairly healthy bacon-and-eggs breakfast every morning before heading off to his job at the factory - that is, till we all got word from the medical powers-that-be that this sort of fare would kill us. Dutifully, my dad swapped his heart-healthy but now anathema bacon for a big bowl of Rice Krispies sweetened with a top layer of Cheerios, over which he would slice half a banana and pour a cup of 2 percent milk. At 9 p.m. every night it was his habit to have milk and cookies, which he'd share with our five dogs. And he loved candy. My parents had a special cupboard in our kitchen set aside for themselves that housed nothing but sweets.

My father also made a point of eating plenty of vegetables, which he also believed were good for his heart, and, I think, just because he liked them. He ate this way, as far as I know, for decades, obediently and unquestioningly following the low-cholesterol dictates of medical authority, just as a lot of people did. On the day I started naturopathic medical school, my dad died of a massive stroke. He was dead, I was told three thousand miles away, before he could even be got to the hospital. I don't know how many countless lives have been lost owing to the absolutely unsubstantiated medical advice that cholesterol and saturated fat are bad for us and that we should eat a bunch of carbohydrate in all its various guises, but my father, as you now know, was one of them.

I don't speak about personal things too much here, but I mention this bit of history because I think it's relevant to an important paper published just last Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. In this paper the authors report that high sugar consumption - in excess of 20 percent of one's daily dietary intake - doubles one's risk of death from heart attack. Now, to put this in perspective, also keep in mind that two slices of whole wheat bread spike our blood sugar as much as do six teaspoons of table sugar - about what would be found in a candy bar - according to William Davis, MD, author of Wheat Belly. Moreover, those in the study whose diets were highest in sugar had a 400 percent(!) higher chance of succumbing to death from cardiovascular disease than those whose diets were lowest in sugar. In his good article Eggs Don't Cause Heart Attacks - Sugar Does, Mark Hyman, MD, points out that drinking just one 20-ounce soda a day will drive up heart attack risk by close to 30 percent.

Sugar is poison. There's no doubt about it. There's also no doubt about the fact that since at least the late 1960s we've been fed a line of life-threatening misinformation. I wrote a post once about the health benefits of cholesterol and saturated fats, so if you ever want the other side of the story, you can have a look here.

And here's the great, classic, and - with 4.2 million hits - virally viewed talk by Robert Lustig, PhD, called Sugar: The Bitter Truth (video 1:29:36), very much worth watching.


Lustig's talk was referenced by Gary Taubes in his 2011 New York Times Magazine essay Is Sugar Toxic?, another good read from the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

The take-home message: stay away from this lousy, heart- and health-destroying, addictive stuff - in all its forms - no matter what big organization tries to tell you otherwise. If you need help switching from a sugar-burning to a fat-burning metabolism, see your local naturopath or paleo/primal physician. We're thrilled to help. There are lots of ways to accomplish this goal, and we can guide you both nutritionally and medically. Also: tell your friends! If I knew then what I know now, you can bet I would have been talking to my dad. So if you know anyone eating cold cereal in little O's or flakes or other shapes, thinking it's somehow good for their heart, please teach them by telling them what you know.

Here's the JAMA Internal Medicine reference: Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults, JAMA Intern Med. Published online February 03, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13563.