Sugar may be the world's worst poison – so the EU subsidises sugar growers through its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

Sugar is a deadly poison and subsidised by the EU Common Agricultural Policy CAP. So grown your own food!

Prof John Yudkin showed, in 1957 that the consumption of sugar and refined sweeteners is closely associated with coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The argument was presented in a famous book Pure, White and Deadly (1972) which was, of course, bitterly attacked by the sugar and soft drinks industries. This may be why Robert H. Lustig (Prof of Clinical Pediatrics, at the University of California) called his much-watched Youtube video Sugar:the Bitter Truth. He extends Yudkin’s argument and explains how sugar is a major factor in heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers, with most of our sugar intake coming from processed foods and soft drinks. A dangerous consequence of eating sugar is that it stimulates the apetite and makes you put on weight. The food processors’ second favourite additive, salt, may be the world’s second worst poison.
So how does the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) deal with this terrible poison? It gives its largest subsidies to sugar producers, of course. Tate & Lyle Europe is the largest UK recipient of CAP money (T&L has received €828m since 1999). I say ‘of course’ because the CAP is a very bad thing, if not quite as bad as the Common Fisheries Policy (CAF) which has led to the ruination of Europe’s fish stocks.
So what has sugar to do with landscape and gardens? Two things (1) the safest food to eat is food which has not been influenced in any way by food processing or the CAP (ie food which has been home grown in gardens and urban agriculture plots) (2) Europe’s current financial crisis is the best hope for some time that the CAP might be reformed – and when this happens there will be an opportunity to switch some of the expenditure towards rural public goods – and away from such notable public bads as the production and use of sugar in processed foods. Landscape planning for growing vegetables in urban areas has to become a key input to the urban design process. It involves strategic policies for water, soils, air, light recycling, land-use and roofspace-use.
The safest nutritional policies are (1) grow you own food (2) cook your own food. The home-grown tomatoes in the above photograph are so delicious they do not need cooking or flavouring. An interesting thought is that if more people composted household waste and grew their own food then GDP/head would fall, because less food would be sold, transported etc. There would also be less expenditure on health care. So I guess politicans, who are elected for promoting ‘economic growth’ will be against it, supported by their economic advisers.

20 thoughts on “Sugar may be the world's worst poison – so the EU subsidises sugar growers through its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

    1. Tom Turner Post author

      The Facebook buttons on the Garden Finder pages are a recent addition and we look forward to seeing if they are useful.
      Thank you for the link, which set me to wondering about honey. Here is some information:
      Honey actually contains the same basic sugar units as table sugar. Both contain glucose and fructose. Granulated table sugar, or sucrose, has glucose and fructose hooked together, whereas in honey, fructose and glucose remain in individual units. Fructose is sweeter than glucose, which is one of the reasons fructose is used in so many food products today. However, fructose does not convert to energy as efficiently as glucose. As a result, processed foods containing granulated sugar high in fructose convert to fat stores more easily than honey. Caloric content of honey differs from that of table sugar. One teaspoon of table sugar contains 16 calories, while one teaspoon of honey has 22 calories. While honey may have more calories, people may actually use less of it, since it is both sweeter and denser than table sugar. This being said, you actually may take in about the same amount of calories that you would with sugar or perhaps even less. Some nutrition experts say honey, unlike table sugar, contains small amounts of vitamins and minerals and that honey can aid in digestion. Researchers are currently looking into antioxidant levels of honey to see if they also can improve one’s health. In addition, pure sucrose, or table sugar, is highly processed, while honey has only one processing step. (The honey is heated to prevent crystallization and yeast fermentation from happening during storage.) This has implications on the environment and on people who believe that minimally processed foods are healthier. Vegans, who don’t use animal products, do not include honey in their eating plans because it is produced by bees. As far as “unmediated pure sugar,” usually called unrefined sugar, goes, most researchers believe it to be a tad healthier than the processed form. The refining process, which is used to get us our good-ol’ table sugar, removes all naturally occurring trace minerals from the sugar plant, leaving us with “empty calories.” Moreover, unlike refined sugar, unrefined sugar has more fiber in it, which provides an added health bonus. Unrefined sugar’s calories are identical to that of table sugar (16 calories/teaspoon).

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  1. Jerry

    Yes, I agree that suger could cause lots of troubles, especially, chocolates! It corrodes teeth first , then throat illness. No suger seems a very good idea, but suger is almost everywhere when we buy food from the market/shop/supermarket. I do not think we could avoid it at all! For example, we could not eat home-made tomatoes everyday in every meal although they are very good. if we are hungry outside, we have to eat in the restaurant and we can not know whether there is suger in it.

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    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Shops sell lots of things, including chocolate, but with a few years of hard practice one can get out of the habit of buying them.
      Does anyone have ideas for how to eat less chocolate?
      I have started taking a sandwich with me when I leave home in order to avoid food with sugar salt and MSG.
      Also, landscape architects, urban designers and and architects can help create cities in which food can be grown.

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  2. Tian Yuan

    But if you leave home more than half a day, do you think one sandwich is enough for you? You must buy something from shops, don’t you? Landscape architects could help create cities in which food can be grown, but how to maintain the landscape? For example, if we put apple trees in along the streets, when the apples are mature, the hungry people will be there to get apples. if two many people come together…

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    1. Tom Turner Post author

      True, but if away from home you can eat fresh fruit and vegetables and it better to buy an unfilled roll than a roll filled with poisonous processed food.
      With regard to food grown in public places there are many examples to think about: (1) They have planted apple trees beside the roads in Germany and Austria for centuries and they do well. (2) Sweet Chestnuts have been growing in Greenwich Park since 1660. Per hectare, chestnuts can produce as much carbohydrate as wheat. (3) brambles would grow well in any public open space in Britain and there are now varieties which produce lush fruit (4) you do need a fenced garden to grow things like tomatoes – or they can be grown on a roof, which is what the University of Greenwich plans to do on its new school building (5) there have been experiemnts with growing vegetables in public open space (eg beside London City Hall) and they have been very successful.
      Are there any examples of food growing in public open spaces in China? Or can readers suggest examples from other countries?

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  3. Christine

    It is very difficult to describe qualitative (what thing) and quantitative (how much) relationships. And yes an acquired taste for sugar can be detrimental to health, ditto for salt and possibly spicy foods. Sometimes we are better at how much (is too much)than we are at saying (what a thing) [ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Sugar_2xmacro.jpg ] is in its essence.

    Whether a food is good or bad for us can be a matter of quantity (how many) or quality (how… ripe, fresh, pesticide free etc). The idea which basically underpins the reason for eating organic – costs more, perhaps you can afford less of it, but is better for you.

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  4. Tom Turner Post author

    The shocking thing about eating sugar and salt is that they stimulate the appetite, leading to obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc. So while sugar is not a toxin in the way arsenic is a toxin it does far more damage because it encourages you to eat more and more. I often notice this when returning from a restaurant: I need a second meal when I get home because the first meal has only stimulated my appetite.

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  5. Tian Yuan

    I have the same feeling after I returning from restaurant. Thank you for telling me the reason is sugar and salt! But if we do not have any sugar or salt, is there any delicious food to eat? I remember the first time i was taught to cook food 10 years ago, the teacher told me to put sugar and salt to make the food delicious, and put the soy sauce to make it look nice!

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    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Yes, yes, yes. There is a much better way of making food taste nice and look nice: herbs. In medieval Europe, salt, meat, fish and honey were very expensive. So the rich had too much of them and the poor had hardly any. The main things poor people ate were beans, peas, cabbage and bread. The taste must have been awful – so they added large quantities of herbs. Onions, leeks and garlic were also popular and for the same reason. I know that Chinese people used to eat raw garlic as well as using it in cooking. Perhaps the habit should be revived? They say garlic is a very healthy food, even if it is not wonderful for your breath!

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    1. Tom Turner Post author

      Understandable, but have you tried eating a whole clove of raw garlic? This used to be very popular in China and it probably still is in country areas. It is a powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic.

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  6. Tian Yuan

    No, I have not eaten even 1/10 clove of raw garlic! It is spicy! Do you like? I should bring some with me for you and I will take a video of your face change while you eating it.:-)

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  7. Lawrence

    There are often bowls of raw garlic on the table in places I visit in China. Most of my site visits are in undeveloped areas, so maybe this is a country thing. But, at the street grill close to my apartment in central Shanghai I am often encouraged by other customers to both eat cloves of garlic with my food and to drink the fearsome white rice wine that distills out at around 56% alchohol. The world’s largest pro-capita consumption of garlic is in Korea, and this country is dependent on import goods to satisfy the huge demand. Annual pro-capita demand is 10 kilos per person, I believe that Spain is close behind. The USA limps far behind with 1 kilo per person. My French friends say that Spanish garlic is rubbish, and it is true that in France the most splendid garlic effects, lasting well into the following day, can be achieved with a couple of cloves, compared to the 4 or five that I use when cooking with Spanish (or Chinese) garlic.

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    1. Tom Turner Post author

      I have a bottle of Moutai (made from sorghum) and regard it as the most undrinkable alcoholic drink I have encountered. It is however claimed to be the world’s best selling spirit. Perhaps my mistake is not to eat raw garlic before tasting it. Thank you for the information about the present consumption of garlic in China. I think it is a very healthy food but feel sure that Moutai counters, or more than counters, its good effects. I believe China is also the world’s largest garlic producer.

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  8. Debra

    Thank God that our aging society is finally seeing the harm the FDA is doing to the populace. It’s sad that they allow sugar and salt in just about everything you buy at harmful levels.
    Read “Killer Salt” and “Sugar Junky” and you’ll know why there is such disease and unease. After reading these books many years ago I started growing my own veggies and herbs. I know with certainty that my backyard garden has contibuted to my healthy golden years and I will continue to grow my own as long as I’m able.

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