Sugar

There is a lot of sugar in the news presently, and I noticed some of it on 1st November, the concern on that occasion being whether we wanted to include the watery continental stuff in the Great British family of Great British Jam, made with proper amounts of sugar and without improper amounts of nasty foreign gelling agents such as pectin.

But most of the coverage is about how we in the affluent west, collectively, ought to cut down the amount of sugar that we get through. Maybe the government ought to do something to discourage said consumption, perhaps at the same time as discouraging the consumption of alcohol. Make them more expensive! Cut down the proportion of active ingredients to the pint!

So, the Guardian carried a piece a few days ago (22nd October, page 32) from a paediatric endocrinologist affiliated to if not employed by the University of California at San Francisco, a place which claims to be a leading university of health (see http://www.ucsf.edu/). Well, they might be a leading university of health but they are not a a leading university of comprehensibility and I found the article - entitled 'Sugar: the poison index' - completely incomprehensible, beyond the general idea that we, the public, are being done over by Big Fructa, who are keen to promote the virtues and sales of fructose. The sugary equivalent of that well known member of the axis of evil, Big Pharma.

All rather a shame. I think it likely that the man has a point, but despite my (albeit elderly) grounding in basic science, I cannot make head nor tail of it. Maybe the responsible editor was out to lunch when this one passed through his tray, snacking on some sugary alcopop in some den of iniquity in Fleet Street. I think there are still one or two of them left.