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Sugar is Toxic?

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So I'm having lunch with my co-workers today and one of them starts talking about how she has gone three months without sugar. The natural questions ensue, "oh, is it a diet", etc.

She tells us no. She has been off of sugar because "sugar is a toxin" and an "inflamatory". Her doctor has prescribed this approach to help treat her hypothyroidism. It's also his belief that we shouldn't consume any sugar at all in our diets.

Given that I know she's into alternative treatments (she once told me to try oil pulling for my sinus infection), I just had to ask, "so, is this your MD?" She gave a little sheepish giggle and said, "no, he's my kinesiologist".

Then she goes into how much better she's feeling and how her husband who is also on the no sugar regimen for athritic symptoms is feeling so much better too.

This was certainly one of those instances where I had to hold back a bit for the sake of office relations.

The funny thing is that this isn't the first time I've heard the "sugar is toxic" claim being thrown about. Any ideas why this seems to be the hot topic of late?
 
Don't our bodies convert carbs to sugars?

That doesn't sound like they are toxic to me.

"Toxins" are the new "Humors" I think.
 
We require sugar. Without glucose, we would simply die, and quickly.

Calling sugar toxic is about as useful as calling water toxic. It is absolutely mandatory that you consume enough of it, or enough of an alternative that your body can convert into it.

Outrageously ridiculous claim.. :mad:
 
Its like saying salt is toxic, and in certain quantities it is very bad for us except we also need it.
 
I assume that the non-doctor "doctor" is referring to dietary sugars -- which, generally speaking, have extremely high GI values and so can contribute to overeating and weight gain.
The idea is that it's better to eat complex carbs, meats, etc. and force your body to undergo the time and energy to break them down than to feed your body processed foods and sugars that can be absorbed immediately.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I assume that the non-doctor "doctor" is referring to dietary sugars -- which, generally speaking, have extremely high GI values and so can contribute to overeating and weight gain.
The idea is that it's better to eat complex carbs, meats, etc. and force your body to undergo the time and energy to break them down than to feed your body processed foods and sugars that can be absorbed immediately.
Click to expand...

This sounds about right to me.

...but it is a far cry from (gasp!) "TOXIC!"
 
Squeeze a peach, berry, apple-or any fruit and many vegetables. boil the juice down. Guess what's left?
So this not-a-doctor also has the person eating...What?
 
AvalonXQ said:
I assume that the non-doctor "doctor" is referring to dietary sugars -- which, generally speaking, have extremely high GI values and so can contribute to overeating and weight gain.
The idea is that it's better to eat complex carbs, meats, etc. and force your body to undergo the time and energy to break them down than to feed your body processed foods and sugars that can be absorbed immediately.
Click to expand...

That's fine. We could all probably eat less refined sugar and be better off for it. But the claim was "sugar is toxic," which is absolutely wrong unless you go into the realm of absurdity and eat a few pounds in one sitting, or take it intravenously.

If doctors were to tell their patients that sugar is toxic just to scare people into eating less, they'll lose patients when everyone finds out they were lying.
 
rwguinn said:
Squeeze a peach, berry, apple-or any fruit and many vegetables. boil the juice down. Guess what's left?
So this not-a-doctor also has the person eating...What?
Click to expand...

Whole wheat grains, meats, and leafy vegetables. Many diets based on low GI have you cut out fruits and fruit juices pretty much entirely for at least a couple of weeks (along with processed sugars).

Of course, we don't know the context. Possibly the non-doctor "doctor" was just talking about processed sugars, syrups, etc. If you can cut all processed foods with added sugars from your diet, that would probably actually be very healthy for most people.
 
I have heard this from people for the past twenty years or more. This is a generality, but it's usually the people that tend to be into "Natural" everything. They vehemently claim that sugar is "bad/poisonous/will kill you" kind of stuff (but they find no issue with dropping acid and doing other drugs - Yes, I'm not making this up, I've met people like this).

I would venture to guess that some people still believe that eating sugar causes diabetes. I read an article a few years back that made it plain and simple that eating sugar didn't cause diabetes, and in the comment section somebody said "Thanks for the great article, I'm going to stop eating sugar immediately". The article went right over this person's head.
 
ehcks said:
That's fine. We could all probably eat less refined sugar and be better off for it. But the claim was "sugar is toxic," which is absolutely wrong unless you go into the realm of absurdity and eat a few pounds in one sitting, or take it intravenously.

If doctors were to tell their patients that sugar is toxic just to scare people into eating less, they'll lose patients when everyone finds out they were lying.
Click to expand...

Hyperbole?

My doctor says he'll "hunt me down" if he finds out I'm not exercising. Should I start wearing a bullet proof vest? (He's mainly a bird hunter, but he may have a rifle, should I check?)

People are stupid and even non-doctors can be misquoted. The non-doctor may have said "for you to lose weight you need to think of sugar as a toxin, think of the ill effects it has on your body, remember, sugar is a toxin!" Would that be so wrong?
 
Wow, that's a blast from the past. I remember a friend from choir banging on about how sugar was poison, some time in the mid 1980s. I tried to explain about the necessity of carbohydrates for energy metabolism, but she talked through me. The best bit was when she said that it's not essential, we don't need it so that makes it "pure poison".

I kind of lost the will to live at this point. This is the woman who also announced quite seriously that the actual word "history" was sexist, because the derivation of the word was "his story". I asked her how that flew in France, but she didn't seem to get it.

Rolfe.
 
A few years ago I read a newspaper article about carrots -- carrots! -- which averred that carrots are bad for you because they're "high in sugar, which is poison for the body".

"Poison for the...?" I thought-screamed at the article-writer. "First, what other kind of poison is there, except 'for the body'? Poison for the soul? It's just such a stupid assertion. And secondly, what about apples? Bananas? Oranges? Cherries? And all the juices made therefrom? Are you telling me it is your considered opinion, as a journalist and commentator on nutrition, that fruits -- most of which have many times the amount of naturally-occurring sugar as freaking carrots -- are 'poison'? Where did you get this information and why are you repeating it without any reference, as though it were a known and universally agreed-upon fact?"

This unsupportable position drives me nuts, especially as a Type 1 diabetic for whom a regular intake of fruits (full of that eee-vil sugar) is not only essential for on-going health, but positively life saving at any given moment.

And since I inject insulin which "normal" people manufacture naturally, it's not as though my need for glucose is somehow abnormal: mine is only an extreme condition in need of greater quantities of an otherwise thoroughly normal human requirement.

It really is the stupidest -- the most contradictory to fact, and the most potentially harmful if heeded -- of woo-y nutritional claims.
 
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"Sugar" is not glucose; it's usually some mix of glucose, fructose and sucrose(which is converted into glucose and fructose very, very quickly).

Fructose is not metabolized like glucose; it is metabolized almost entirely in the liver and there are some indications that it may be quite harmful in the ridiculous amounts people eat sugar today(something like 70 kg per person per year; we're not talking a couple of pieces of fruit per day here.)
 
A lot of low-carbers cite the work of Otto Warburg to support the idea that sugar causes cancer.
 
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