The United Nations World Health Assembly set out in 2012 to save the world from avoidable deaths caused by non-communicable diseases, or NCDs. The aim was to lower the amount of deaths by 25% by 2025. The regulations of alcohol and tobacco have helped this, but now the third and biggest killer is coming under fire by the UN. But what can be more deadly than alcohol and tobacco I hear you call? Well… it’s sugar.
NCDs are health issues that are not infectious and cannot be passed between people. Often, they are caused by lifestyles. Tobacco and alcohol consumption are massive contributors to NCD deaths, and they are becoming more and more regulated by the world governments. The UN now has turned its attention to unhealthy diets.
Diets high in sugar content are apparently responsible for more deaths worldwide than alcohol abuse and smoking, and there is major concern amongst the United Nations World Health Assembly that people simply do not realise how much sugar they eat on a daily basis.
Many “low-fat” branded foods are said to make up for the low-fat taste by supplementing it with large amounts of sugar. This can lead to obesity and other critical conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, which kill an estimated 35 million people a year.
Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra asserts that there needs to be a separation between intrinsic sugars and added sugars in food.
A lot of sugar in our diet is simply added, and he says that sugar itself holds no nutritional value and is not needed by the body. The energy that sugar does supply can, and is, gotten from fats and carbohydrates which, while known as being ‘unhealthy’ at least have some nutritional value. Added sugar is unnecessary, and food labelling doesn’t discern between normal sugars and added sugar.
This comes on the heels of an investigation that revealed people may be eating up to 22.5 teaspoons’ worth of sugar every day.
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