February 2/San Francisco/San Francisco Chronicle -- In a paper published in Nature, a team of University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) scientists argue that increased global consumption of sugar is primarily responsible for a whole range of chronic diseases that are reaching epidemic levels around the world.
Sugar is so heavily entrenched in the food culture in the U.S. and other countries that getting people to kick the habit will require much more than simple education and awareness campaigns, the UCSF scientists said. It is going to require public policy that gently guides people toward healthier choices and uses brute force to remove sugar from so many of the processed foods we eat every day, said Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF.