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Sugar -- the elephant in the kitchen: Robert Lustig at TEDxBermuda 2013

Jun 04, 2021
Obama from Congress. They don't even make enough for two grapes. And, if you eat breakfast at schools, they give you Fruit Loops and a glass of orange juice. There are 11 teaspoons of

sugar

; You have already exceeded your goal. Do you want to know why we have the problem? That's why we have the problem. But everyone says: "Education!" "Educate the public, educate the population, tell them what to do!" But there's a problem: education hasn't worked for any of the abused substances. Did Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" Work? (Laughs) Or not? (Laughs) And you know what? I can prove that it doesn't work, because here I have the S&P 500 stock prices of McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and you see what happened with the economic crisis of 2008.
sugar    the elephant in the kitchen robert lustig at tedxbermuda 2013
They have done very well, thanks to you. In fact, if you want to make money, invest in a food company. So where does this take us? It brings us to the question of freedom and personal responsibility. What does personal responsibility really mean? Hmm, if the information is kept secret and you don't know anything, if access to it is restricted because you can't even find access, and if society can't achieve it, and we can't even give our children something healthy. Eating, is it really a personal responsibility? And finally, if your decision to drink a

sugar

y drink puts you in the emergency room and costs me money, and if your decision to be fat and sick costs your employer $2,750 to hire, whether you're fat or not, do you know what they call to that?
sugar    the elephant in the kitchen robert lustig at tedxbermuda 2013

More Interesting Facts About,

sugar the elephant in the kitchen robert lustig at tedxbermuda 2013...

They don't call this freedom, they call it anarchy. We won this. Liberals will say, "Come out for a second, you're not going to tell me what to eat!" Hmm, you know what? They've already told you what to eat. Where have you been for the last 40 years while the food supply changed right under your nose? You didn't protest anything then? Liberals will say, "Get the government out of my

kitchen

!" You know I don't want the government in my

kitchen

either, except there's something even more dangerous about it. So the question is basically, who the hell do you want in your kitchen?
sugar    the elephant in the kitchen robert lustig at tedxbermuda 2013
The government, which will take away your freedom and your wallet? Or the food industry, which has already taken away your freedom, your wallet and your health? You can only choose this. Now, with all that being said, the food industry is made up of a lot of people, and you know what? They really want to do the right thing and they do it. As individuals, they would want to do the right thing. I met these people and they are actually very nice people, but they work for a food company. and contrary to what the Supreme Court says, corporations are not people.
sugar    the elephant in the kitchen robert lustig at tedxbermuda 2013
Because corporations are entrusted with responsibility to shareholders, not to the people. Corporations work with quarterly earnings cycles and Wall Street reports. And these reports want facts. I met with the food industry and I'll give you an example, without naming names, they told me bluntly, ten scientists, ten corporate executives, said, "Yes, we can change. We've done it before." "We had to change sometime in the '80s, when we moved to fat reduction, with two conditions: we can't do it alone and we can't lose money." These are the two current obstacles. What does this mean? This means that they have to be told what to do and everyone has to do it at the same time, so that no one has an advantage in the competition.
What does this mean? That means government. But governments are complicit and complacent. Get paid for it. More than half of Congress receives money from the food industry. And 6% of our exports are food. What do you think would happen if we suddenly said to the world, "Do you know that all that fertilizer we put on our food isn't good for you at all?" What happened when a stray cow got bored from Canada to Washington state? For two years, there was an end to meat sales in Britain and South Korea. Neyse, these are over there. But we are left with a crisis, because we will not have medical care.
Here's a report that just came out from an investment bank, an international investment bank, Credit Suisse, titled Sugar Consumption at the Crossroads, and here's an opening quote from that volume: "We believe that taxing food more heavily and sugary drinks will be the "Best option to reduce consumption and finance health care costs associated with diabetes and obesity." An investment bank demands taxes. That's how big and serious this problem has become. I think the Food should bring health, not disease, and it once did. But you know what? This is a public health crisis, and public health crises are not solved one person at a time.
Here is a list of diseases that used to be matters entirely of personal responsibility, minus the seriousness of each, and they became public health crises. Why not add sugar to this list? Personal responsibility is not an ideology. It is an

elephant

in the room and we can't handle it. What we need is a policy based on biology. And it has a name. It's called real food. And the only way to fix this is to get this

elephant

out of the kitchen. Thank you. (Applause)

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