The film-makers say it is not in the interest of food, beverage or pharmaceutical companies to reduce sugar content. “It’s too profitable,” says Lustig. The pharmaceutical industry talks of diabetes treatment, not prevention. “The food industry makes a disease and the pharmaceutical industry treats it. They make out like bandits while the rest of us are being taken to the cleaners.”
Lustig says laws are needed. The model for regulation is alcohol since alcohol metabolises as sugar and produces many of the same chronic diseases while fat metabolises differently.
But Lustig believes that education or government guidelines alone are inadequate to address substance abuse problems. “What’s necessary is to limit availability to reduce consumption and reduce alcohol-related health problems,” he says.
Proposals include putting health warnings on soft-drinks cans, giving equal advertising time to marketing fresh fruit and vegetables and voluntary agreements to reduce sugar content.
Lustig says: “If the food industry continues to obfuscate, we will never solve this and by 2026 we will not have healthcare because we will be broke. Food producers are going to have to be forced. There’s only one group that can force them, and that’s the government…”
Can it?
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