( music playing ) ♪ ooh, when i'm with you baby, i go out of my head ♪ ♪ i just can't get enough, i just can't get enough ♪ ♪ all the things you do to me and everything you said ♪ ♪ we slip and slide as we fall in love ♪ ♪ and i just can't seem to get enough, oh ♪ damon: my name is damon gameau. this is my weatherboard house. this is a time lapse of my girlfriend's pregnancy
with three months to go. and this is a photo of me at age 10. i was a rare boywhose face grew into his teeth. five years ago, when i met my girlfriend, i was pretty much living on cigarettes, sugar and my homemade australian pizzas. but then, as men often do, they find interesting things to impress a girl. woman: --
damon: for me, it was healthy eating. i actually cut out refined sugar from my diet to seal the deal. but now sugar is dominating the headlines. and there's so much debate and conjecture on the topic that it's hard to know what to believe. but with this little person on the way, i feel like i need some definitive answers. if the averageaustralian family of four
had to buy the sugarthey are consuming in a week, they would be goingto the supermarket, taking six 1 kilo bags of sugaroff the shelves, six, taking it home,eating it all that week, then going back next weekand doing it again. clearly, the ability to beon a high sugar diet is really new, especially in termsof evolutionarily time zone. damon: sugar has becomeso prevalent in today's society
that if you removed all the items containing it from a standard supermarket's shelves, just 20% of items would remain. ( applause ) ladies and gentlemen,boys and girls, this is the condensedhistory of sugar. the first reports of sugar camefrom new guinea in 8,000 bc. local mythology says thatthe human race came about after a man made loveto the stalk of a sugarcane.
ow! then, by a tradeof migration routes, the cane made its way to india. thank you. in the 12th century,sugar arrived in europe, and due to its rarityit quickly became the status symbol for royalty. queen elizabeth ihad a real love of sugar. so much so that her teethrotted and went black from it.
( laughter ) at the startof the 20th century, sugar was still seenas a treat, something you would addto a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, but then in 1955, an even occurred thatsignificantly influenced the amount of sugarwe eat today. man: a stunned nation hears that
its president is stricken with a heart attack at the... damon: on september 23rd, 1955, the us president dwight eisenhower suffered a heart attack and the issue of heart disease was thrust into the public domain. man: summoned to the hospital, a famed boston heart specialist... damon: two strong theories emerged. one led by an american scientist named ancel keys
who declared that fat was the problem. while a british doctor named john yudkin believed sugar was to blame. i'd be very happy if everybody hadfour pounds of sugar a year. they eat a hundred pounds. damon: over the next two decades, the discussion brought fierce arguments from both camps.
but by the end of the 1970s, ancel keys had won out. fat become the villain, sugar was exonerated, and a low fat movement was in full swing. we institutionalized this idea that a low fat dietis a healthy diet. so what do you want to do isremove fat. this is how industryperceived this. we're gonna remove fatfrom otherwise healthy foods. and when we do this,we have to replace the calories,
we have to make surewe have the right mouth feel or it has to tasteas good as it did with fat, and the best way to do thatis with sugar. damon: with sugar now is saturating our food supply, and a constant confusionover its effects on our health, the only real way to get some answers is for me to start eating sugar again and see what it does to my body. so the first step is to set up an experiment
with the help of a team of experts. my chief sugar advisor is the author david gillespie, aka, the crusader. in charge of my blood tests is one of australia's leading clinical pathologists, dr. ken sikaris, aka professor blood. my nutritionist is sharon johnston, the celtic food queen. and supervising my overall health
is dr. debbie herbst, aka check upz. okay, so i wantto do this mission. i want to find outwhat sugar does to me. what kind of thingsdo i need to do? if you want to matchaustralian averages... mm-hmm. you're gonna have to bein the range 40 teaspoons of sugar a day. - forty a day?- yeah. forty a day.
that's what's embedded in mostof the processed food that most people are eating. so, right. does that mean i'm gonna eat a lot of these kind ofsour rainbow blowpipes? i mean, is that-- how am i gonna getthe 40 teaspoons? you won't need to comenear a place like this to get the 40 teaspoons.
you just go to a super marketand you'll get 40 teaspoons. right. the point is to test outa very high sugar diet and see what effects we get. what changes -- in the body? two months, i'm gonna eat40 teaspoons of sugar a day. forty teaspoons? forty teaspoons.
how are you gonna do that? off the shelf breakfast cereals,like, just right low fat, flavored yoghurts. another good one would besome beans on toast. it's baked beans. one serving of ice tea, you'll end up with nearly9 teaspoons of sugar. if i can achieve40 teaspoons a day without touching perceivedcandy or junk food,
i mean, i can't quite fathomthat's possible, but if we can do that and seesome changes then that's, yeah, that seems likea pretty good story. a lot of your health markersare going to be going in very much the wrong direction. and i'm very glad to hearthat you're gonna be having some medical supervision because i thinkyou're gonna need it. anyone in the familywith diabetes?
no. no. no. oh, good. and heart disease? no. all pretty thin and wiryirish or french folk. we're going to look at how the blood sugar changes,obviously. we've got blood tests that can look at the effectof the heart. but even more than that, we're looking for the changes
that might occur in the liverand its production of fat. i'd like to go to 1932 please. done. all right. so you've got a really normalhealthy blood pressure, 121/79. your heart rate ispretty good at 75, so it's pretty good. all right, so we'll just havea listen to your heart, see what it sounds like.
you know what it's saying,damon. don't do this crazy thing? exactly.that's exactly what i heard. there are some tests thatwe're doing just to make sure that you're not doinganything too stupid here. usually i'm telling the people not to eatall this sort of stuff, so... i personally think you're insanefor doing it at all.
no, no, no. honestly,i think it's dangerous. but i guess on the plus side, everybody elseis already doing it. damon: so this is where my health stands pre-experiment. my total calorie intake is approximately 2,300 a day with 50% coming from good fats, like avocado and nuts, 26% from protein such as, eggs, meat or fish,
and 24% from carbohydrates like fresh vegetables. and of course, there is no refined sugar. i currently weigh 76 kilograms with a waist circumference of 84 centimeters. my blood tests showed a very healthy liver, a very low level of triglyceride which is fat in the bloodstream, and thankfully no sign ofinsulin resistance or diabetes. overall, i rated slightly healthier
than the average western male of my age. the next step in the experiment was to do a shop. to calculate my 40 teaspoons, i need to keep in mind that 1 teaspoon equals roughly 4 grams of sugar. but i also need a lesson in the different types of sugar. it's time to meetthe sugar family. when we eat certain foods,they adhere to a rule.
they break down to glucosewhich our body uses for fuel. breads, pasta,veggies and grain, all turn to glucose to be usedby our brain. oh. but also,our cells and our organs, too. so without any glucose,there would be no you. lactose is nextand she is as smooth as silk. she's the firstsugar mammals have, it's in their mother's milk.
you'll find it in cheese and milkand tubs of yogurt, too. but take careif you're intolerant, you'll be rushing to the loo. now sucrose is the sugarthat all the fuss is about. some say it's dangerous,while others still have doubt. sucrose is the table sugarwe have in coffee or tea. she is the sugar family'ssweet little daughter. or not, apparently.
( growls ) now this table sugar or sucroseis made up of two sugars. it is 50% glucose,the head of the family, plus 50% fructose. now fructose may well bethe sugar family's mischievous teenage sonbecause in the past, this fructose wasvery, very rare. it was found in fruitsand veggies and honey, if you're dead.
but now,we find it everywhere. in so many foods we eat. and you'll always knowif you're eating fructose 'cause it's the thingthat makes food sweet. you see, people on this planetare growing sicker every day, and many scientistsnow believe that fructose has a role to play. zoe: hey. hey! the first load.
why don't make thismiddle shelf the sugar zone? i love it. yes. some juicy juice. the juice boxes, babe. - yep.- up and go. so here are the rules for my next 60 days. i must consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, but they must be hidden sugars found in commonly perceived healthy foods and drinks.
so no soft drink, chocolate, confectionery or ice cream. these 40 teaspoons of sugar will consist of sucrose and fructose specifically. they can be added like jam or naturally occurring like sultanas. i must always choose low fat foods and maintain the same level of exercise as i already do. that's 3 laps of my garden twice a week and a 10 minute workout on my homemade gym.
and by homemade, i mean homemade. tomorrow morning i start.what are you feeling? i hope you're okay. ( birds chirping ) darling,do we have a metric cup, like, to measure size? - yep. yep.- right. so this just righttells me that it's 12 grams of sugarper serving, all right?
so that's divided by 4 that's roughly 3 teaspoonsof sugar per serving. that's a recommendedserving size with 3 teaspoons of sugar. now i don't know about you,but i'm a growing boy. i'm gonna needa little bit more of that. that feels likea shot of just right. yeah, i'm gonna take 2 1/2. okay, so 2 1/2,
so one which is kind of3 teaspoons, 2 is 6 teaspoons, another half. there's about7 1/2 teaspoons of sugar just in that bowl. and i haven't addedthe yogurt yet. per serving there is 27 grams, below that's gonna be lactose,so i reckon 18 grams, 18 divided by 4 is just over 4. so 4 to my 7,
so there's 11 teaspoons of sugarand then i got to add my juice. i'm gonna put about 400 milsof apple juice -- there we're looking at9 teaspoons. so this combined, i'm looking at nearly20 teaspoons to start the day. hi, david. how are you going? david: good. how are you? fine.i just had a quick question. i just sort of hadmy first breakfast
and it got to about20 teaspoons. twenty teaspoons? i almost couldn't believe it, but i did all the mathsand it just seems ridiculous. you're gonna have to be on a diet for the rest of the day if you're only allowed to have 20 teaspoons for the rest of the day. well, that's what i mean.
i'll have to eat celeryfor the rest of the day. just obscene. when we were stillforging and hunting and gathering and tryingto search for fruit and things in our environment, we needed to be highly attunedto what sweetness there was because we reallyneed the calories. and of course, now we bring with usthat ancient lust for sugar
that the ability to findeven small amounts and it's a casewhere we were looking for a little but nowwe have too much. and so, the system in evolutionary termsis not really set up to deal with thissudden abundance of highly refined sugar. damon: after just two days of the experiment, i was amazed at how easy it was
to get to 40 teaspoons without eating any junk food. i've just had a breakthrough as to how we might beconsuming so much fructose. i just bought these four apples. now i know thatif i tried to eat these apples, i'll probably get throughtwo of them and i'd feel full. the fiber in the fruitwould tell my body to stop. it's had enough to eat.
but i want to see what happens if i can juicethese four apples. so that's four apples, that's the sugar fromfour apples in one glass. now one apple is about4 teaspoons of sugar, so that's 16 teaspoons of sugarin that glass. see, nature has given usthis perfect little packet and it's got all the nutrients, the fiber that tells uswhen we're full
and just the rightamount of sugar in this. but what we do iswe invent a machine like this which extracts only the sugar and then we throweverything else away. this high amount of sugar in juice and drinks in general was certainly the biggest surprise of the first week. beverage tend toreally create a rush what i kind of call ittsunami effect,
so you basically have thishuge wave of sugar that gets to your liver and thathas a lot of consequence. damon: it was now day 12and time for my first weigh in. moment of truth. 79.3. huh? i'm about to cry. - why?- 3.2 kilos.
- in 12 days.- in 12 days. and that's withoutone fizzy drink, no ice cream,no chocolate. that is the "healthy food." it's alarming.alarming, alarming. i guess it's... damon: debbie's alarm wasn't about the amount of weight i'd gained. it was the fact that it was all around my belly.
this is what's known as visceral fat. i'm having a baby. here's a great example of it. on this person, the fat comes up as black. you can see there is a very small amount of fat just under the skin, but lots of visceral fat on the inside, cramping the organs. there is a term for this.
tofi, thin on the outside, fat on the inside. we know that with fructose you tend to accumulatemore fat in this area. we don't know why,but we know on the other hand that when you do accumulatethat fat in this area, you have a lot ofmetabolic disease that are associatedwith this. damon: on day 15, it occurred to me what 40 teaspoons of sugar would actually look like,
stripped of its cleverly marketed packaging. today i'm gonna eat40 actual teaspoons of sugar. just right, low fat yogurt. there's 10 teaspoons of sugar. here, just a bowlof plain -- so what i'm going to do... this now equals that. it's timefor the mid morning snack. now i could havethis amount of frozen yogurt.
four... eleven. so it's lunch. i have this delicious pieceof chicken here. now i could add half a packetof this teriyaki chicken sauce. alternatively... now to wash it down,i could have one of these. so it's the mid afternoonslump. now as a pick me up,
i could have thisgo natural super food apple strawberrycranberry ripple bar or i can have this 7 teaspoonedwater cracker sugar sandwich. it was at this point that i thought i better check in with professor blood. the big change is thatthe liver function tests have had an amazing rise in one of the enzyme levels,the alt level. the alt is a enzymein the liver
which helpsthe reactions go out. if it appears in your blood, 'cause that's wherewe measured it, it shows that the liver cellsare releasing their contents, i.e., they're being damagedor dying. and so the, you know,that's really... my liver cells are dying. they are.they are. it's obviouslygetting full of fat.
you've got the signsof a fatty liver. and this is reallythe first time i'm actually saying that it can be actually developedin two or three weeks. given my liver has turnedto fat after just 18 days, i think it's timeto take a closer look to what sugar doesonce it enters the body. this is the actorbrenton thwaites. he's very kindlyvolunteered his body
for the followingdemonstration. after sugar enters the body,it splits into two parts: fructose and glucose, both of whichmake their way to the liver. ( heartbeat ) now once in the liver, the glucose is dealtwith efficiently. it's either used immediatelyfor energy or stored for later, like a spare battery.
but the fructose half of sugaris very different. the liver doesn't have a systemto regulate the fructose because it wasso rare in nature. so it hoovers itout of the bloodstream whether it needs or not. and if all ourspare batteries are full, then it rapidly turnsit into fat. some of that fat is gonnastay in the liver. and you're gonna haveincreased risk
for insulin resistanceand diabetes. what also happens is that this fat in the liver is then sent out intothe bloodstream as triglycerides which can leadto excess weight, plus blocked arteries,and heart disease. now when we're eatinglots of sugar and other carbohydrateslike bread and pasta, we're producinglots of glucose.
a hormone called insulinis released, which is like a key that helpsto open our cells' doors so they can absorball the glucose, remove it from the bloodstreamand burn it for energy. the more glucose in the blood,the more insulin is released. but the key pointfor us is that while this insulinis in the blood dealing with all the glucose, it tells our fat cellsto hold on to the fat.
it actually turns offour fat burning processes. so when we're eatinglots of sugar, we're putting fat intoour bodies via the fatty liver, plus because of all the glucose,we maintain a little of insulin, which tells our fat cellsto hold on to the fat. we can't burn off fatwhen insulin is around dealing with all the sugar. this is whatmay be happening to a huge numberof the population!
it's highly unlikelywith brenton though. gary: the issuethat we're talking about is that there arethese chronic diseases related to obesityand diabetes, heart disease, many cancers, gout, hypertension, high blood pressure,possibly alzheimer's disease. the question is,would these diseases exist... if sugar wasn't in the diet?
so this morning, i've woken upand i feel pretty drained. i had a chicken dish last nightthat was pretty sweet. and i can just tell thatmy body feels lethargic and it's waitingfor its next sugar injection. so the perfectly named up & gois gonna start my day today. banana flavored with about4 to 5 teaspoons of sugar. it was obvious that sugar was affecting me physically, but the real surprise was the impact it was having on my moods.
it's amazing, it's so sweet and i can feel my brainresponds to it straightaway like, it tastes delicious. the thing i've noticedthe most is the mood swings, big highs when i have the sugarand i feel super alert and switched onfor about 45 minutes. yes. and then i'll get this feelingof real lethargy, i feel vague, a bit aloofuntil i get that next hit again
and theni'm right to concentrate. i just noticedthe attention is reduced and he's much moredistracted and it's very unlike him,very unusual. what you're describing is absolutelywhat the research has shown, is a high, concentration,energy, followed by a crash. the brain and bodyruns on glucose. if the glucose level is goingconstantly up and down,
you know, zinging,high and low and high and low and back and forth, then your mental functionis just unstable. if your glucose level is stableand not fluctuating, then you have more clarity. it's almost likethe body is getting used to this new realitythat i've created and it gets its burst of energyfrom the sugar. and thenwhen that's not happening,
it's like going,okay, we're ready. like, i guess, i used to smoke,it's a similar feeling. tell me a little bit moreabout what it's like when you've just hadsome sugar. and whenyou're on the sugar high. a quite childish thingcomes out in me like... and then i'm -- through all. he can be like that in,you know, day to day life, he's really fun and playful,but the difference is
there's a kindof manic edge to it that wasn't there before. it's kind of a bit more like... now the manic stateis quite interesting because it's not the sameas happiness, right? there's a sort of a senseof being wired. it's raining sugar! so it's interesting because that's the thingthat we do see.
and of coursei'm not suggesting you've got bipolar disorder but it's a phenomenathat we see in that particular conditionwhere there's a very high mood but it's not actuallya very pleasant mood. so, damon,the way that blood sugar affects your mood, i like to explain to peoplewith a really simple diagram. so this is yourblood sugar levels here.
this is the pointwhere your brain is really happy 'cause it's got enough sugarto keep it going and it's yourmost important organ in the body in that way. when you eat somethingthat's really sugary, like lollies or fruit juicesthat sort of thing, your blood sugarwill spike really quickly and then it will crash downagain really quickly. the reason it crashesreally quickly is
because in responseto that sugar, the body releases insulin,the hormone, that takes it into the cellsso it can be used for energy. so that big crash though means that your brain isno longer happy. so in response to that, we get the releaseof stress hormones like adrenaline, which is then signalingthe brain to tell you
to eat something sugary again. to get back up again. so that we canget it back up again. wow. and so once again we get more insulinand it dips down. and that's why you getthe fluctuations in your mood from that sugar spikingand falling. and the problemwith the adrenaline is that
that can lead to anxietyand even panic attacks because of those mood changes. ( indistinct chatter ) damon: given my experience of fluctuating blood sugar levels, i couldn't help but think of children struggling to learn at school. could a diet full of hidden sugar be contributing to the problem?
this has hada very profound impact on children's behavior,on mental illness, it has exacerbatedmany different types of neurological disorders, but we don't actually namewhat the cause is, which is the sugarthat's in the diet. man: sugar crisp is candy coated right down to the last wheat puff in the box. as a cereal it's dandy.
for snacks it's so handy. or eat it like candy. ♪ post's sugar crisp ♪ all right, love, it's for the-- you know why i'm doing it. the speed at which my high sugar diet was affecting me took us all by surprise. i was going to have to expand the scope of the experiment and this would take me out of town for a few days.
in 2002, i spent some time with an aboriginal community and was stunned by the amount of sugar they consumed. like so many indigenous cultures introduced to a western diet, their relationship with sugar seemed particularly destructive. man: the aborigines have remarkably
little sugar in their diet. two or three small pieces of candy would be equal to the sum total of the amount of sweetness that an aborigine would get in one year. damon: in 2008, coca-cola claimed that australia's northern territory was their highest selling region per capita in the world. this is in large part due to the local stores
in the aboriginal communities. just 100 kilometers from uluru is the small town of amata. it has always been alcohol free. but in 2007, its population of just under 400 people consumed 40,000 liters of soft drink. so one aboriginal man decided to do something about it. his name is john tregenza. this is his case. this is his -- and this is his nickname.
why? because i cutthrough the bullshit. john: when i firstcame up here in 1973, i would estimate that say10% of the people's diet came from the store, and now it's almost 100%. so i was obviously criticalthat people's health depended on whatthey are carrying out the store door.
damon: this reliance on the store has been caused by a variety of environmental changes, the main one being the introduction of a foreign grass that took over the plains and drove away the native plants and animals that had provided bushtukah for centuries. being in amata, it was hard to believe that only 40 years ago
these people were living predominantly off the land. all our families and all people, all our grandfathersand great, great parents, they only eating bushtukahs, like emus, kangaroos, turkey, wild tomatoes, wild beets, and they were healthy, no sickness. and then the white fellowcome into australia,
he bringall the sweet things like lollies, biscuit, everything. damon: with stores filling up with highly profitable sugary items and the community's health rapidly declining, john, his colleagues and a local health counsel established a program to ensure people had access to fresh, healthy produce.
they called it mai wiru. ( singing in foreign language ) the mai wiru quickly went to work. they removed deep fryers, added free cold water fountains, and hired a nutritionist to educate the community. for the children, they made music videos with psychedelic vegetables and put up the signs on the store's fridges.
i put this one to the test and i think they might be onto something. but most importantly, the local people were empowered and began making their own decisions about their health. the community at amata decided that they wanted to reducethe amount of sugar intake that they were havingthroughout the community.
damon: the first high sugar item to go was the black fizzy stuff. so -- said,we don't want coke, so they don't have coke. so no one is upset about it. it is a decision by the elders and so we,we don't have coke. damon: mai wiru was working. and in a very short time,
amata had the lowest rate of sugar consumption in the region. which level of sugar consumptionin other communities of --it's astronomical. it is over the top. i thinkthe mai wiru group in itself could teach a lot of the othercommunities a lot. damon: but just when everything seemed to be headed in the right direction,
the government slashed mai wiru's funding. the organization is now leftwith a skeleton of staff, the nutritionistwas the first to go. the -- that a youngamata people really feel it because it was their idea. like, they are the oneswho solve the problem, they are oneswho bury their own people, they are the oneswho want to make a change and they have beentotally ignored,
overridden and havingfunding taken off by federal and state governments and given tonon-aboriginal organizations. it's really quite outrageous. damon: the thing that struck me about amata is that although coke is gone, without a nutritionist to continue the education, people are still consuming vast amounts of sugar in other products.
and their health is suffering as a consequence. there's a perceptionthat the problems with obesity and diabetesmay be related to alcohol, but here at amatait's been a dry community ever since it was established. so all of the health problems including diabetesand the kidney failure is all related to the diet. damon: john offered to take me to a special place
where the full effects of a disabled mai wiru can be felt. i've known almost everyoneburied here. i've got family membersburied here. these five graves hereare all people under 40. that's another young personin there. a group up here of two sistersand a brother, they all passed awayfrom kidney failure. most of these deaths hereare premature
and could have been avoidedwith correct diet and accessto affordable healthy food. it's a complete tragedy. damon: after four days in amata, it occurred to me that what is happening to my body is perhaps a concentrated version of what has happened here and in many other indigenous communities. i've been sugar free for a long time,
and now by suddenly subjecting myself to a high sugar diet, the effects have been both rapid and acute. if immediate action isn't taken to restore the positive direction that mai wiru was heading in, then the oldest living culture on earth is in great danger of disappearing. oh, look at that, 81.2. 81.2. okay.so what's that in...
1.6. so how?in a month i put on 5? something like that.yeah, you-- seventy six. you started out at 76. yeah.over 5 kilos. oh, my god. what? hang on, is it a--hang on, don't tell me.
ninety one. ninety one? so okay, 7 centimeters. seven centimeters. if i kept goingfor the next three or four monthsat these levels, would i be knockingon the door of obesity? definitely.you haven't got far to go. i'm eating a lot morethan i would.
i'm snacking a lot morethan i would have before. now i find it very hardto feel full. not surprisingbecause you are not eating very much good fatsor proteins. it's the fat and the protein that actually helps usfeel fuller. all the low fat foodsthat we've been told are good for usand that we should be eating, actually tend to be higherin sugar anyway,
as you know, and they arenot helping us to feel full. damon: with the effects of sugar now clearly taking a toll on me... - hello.- hello. and having witnessed its devastation in amata... packing. i needed to talk to some people that knew a lot more about the subject than i did. oh, behind you,hanging off my cupboard door.
it was time to head to cultural capital of convenience, the maker of the processed food and sugar industry, and the current number one ranked world obesity champion. look out, america.here comes sugar daddy. ♪ big time ♪ ♪ so much larger than life ♪ ♪ i don't knowwhere she's going ♪ so we're here in america,day 1.
jet lag. so i just went into jamba juiceand got me one of these, 139 grams of sugar. i actually needa calculator for this. that... that is 34 teaspoons of sugar... in that drink. that is nearlymy daily allowance in this cup. what a great jet lag cure.
wow.wow. damon: now if i was to eat the same amount of sugar that was in that smoothie, but the sugar wasin its original fruit packaging, i would have to eat 4 peaches, 9 limes, 30 lemons and 30 strawberries. this might be fine for a bear about to go into hibernation, but it can have damaging effects for a human who thinks they are making a healthy choice.
one of the interestingconflicts today is this idea pushedby some of our government, well meaninggovernment officials that if you could just getcoca-colas out of mcdonalds and get the kids to drinkfruit smoothies, they'd be healthier and yetthe fruits smoothies have just as much sugaras a coca-cola. damon: the first thing i noticed with american foods
was how difficult it was gonna be to stay under 40 teaspoons. it wasn't just the abundance of sugar in the food, but also the presence of a sweetener called high fructose corn syrup. its primary delivery system is soft drink which adds roughly 4,000 teaspoons a year to the diet of each american. people don't actually realizethat high fructose corn syrup
and sugarare virtually identical. see corn refinersback in the 1980s did their best to make surethat people didn't equate high fructose corn syrupwith sugar. flash forward 20 years later,people are blaming high fructose corn syrupfor the obesity epidemic. and now the corn refiners are desperately trying to saythat they are sugar, they are no different than sugarand the sugar industry is gong,
no you're not,you're entirely different. turbinado. fruit juice concentrate. evaporated cane juice. with sugar in high fructose corn syrup now in the spotlight, i noticed the companies are using a range of seductive names for other fructose based sweeteners.
agave. any sugar,brown sugar, white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentratefrom fruit juice, equal affect on your health. not feeling very wellat all today. nauseous in my stomachand a headache all morning. and it's interestingas we're driving through rural america now,in north carolina.
♪ oh, my kingdom's sinking ♪ ♪ and i don't know what to do ♪ it's so hard to getany kind of decent food. there are signsthat say food exit, but that foodis either mcdonalds or taco bell or kfc,it' impossible. and if you grow up as a kid and this is your only experienceof food and what food is, it's little wonder that
there's a massive problemin this country. ♪ it takes two to -- on you ♪ ♪ it takes one to be saved ♪ ( crowing ) the next stop was barbourville, kentucky. in the great cola wars of the 1990s, pepsi and coke were engaged in a fierce battle. the pepsi army took a strong foothold in the state of kentucky.
and their number one sniper is the drink mountain dew. in this 1.25 liter bottle, you'll find 37 teaspoons of sugar and 40% more caffeine than the same sized bottle of coke. the people of kentucky have understandably had some problems with their teeth. and one dentist is doing something about it. his name is edwin smith. this is his letter box,
this is his daughter and this is him as a collectable figurine. edwin drives around the state of kentucky in rvs he has converted into mobile dental clinics. he and his team visit schools, educate the kids and treat their teeth. early in my practicei saw these patients who would havethis unusual decay, brown decayaround the gum line,
usually the front teeth. and most of these peoplewere addicted to mountain dewin particular and that's where we came up with the termmountain dew mouth. i've talked to some kids thatsay they may drink 10 a day. they starteddrinking it so early that they don't knowwhen they started. mountain dewtickles your innards
'cause there's a bangin every bottle. they take the lid off,they take a drink, 20 minutes or soit starts to wear off and they take another drink. it takes the oral cavity,the mouth 20 minutes to cleanse itself naturallywith saliva. so if you're taking a drinkevery 20 minutes, it's as though you're bathingyour teeth in this all day long. ( gunshot )
what's the youngest kidsthat you treat? sometimes 3-year-olds. three, four-year-oldsthat have a lot of tooth decay. and those are usually, what they callbaby bottle tooth decay and that's from having juicesin baby bottles. sometimes it's from havingsoft drinks in baby bottles too. do you do the majorityof your treatments in kentucky? - yes.- okay.
it's eastern kentucky, appalachian regionin the mountains. that's the poorest regionin the state. it's directly relatedto poverty. yeah. larry: it's pretty common for people around here to drink a lot of pop. mainly it's mountain dew and pepsi. damon: this is 17 year old larry.
he's lived in kentucky all his life. this is his tat, this is his favorite t-shirt and these are his teeth. my 18th birthdayis in 8 days and, i mean, people look downupon me because of my teeth. as i was a kid, i was neverworried about my teeth. and i would just take a popeverywhere i went and i always hadone in my hand. and how olddo you reckon you were
when you hadyour first mountain dew? like how old? i would probably saytwo or three. and how much a daywould you say you have? i would say at leastfour or five bottles. if it was cans,i would say at least a 12 pack. twelve cans a day? is there other people doingthat in this town or is it... what about you weretalking about cousin before?
i would say aboutsix or seven cans a day and he's only 3 years old. how does he--does he drink it from the can? no, from the bottle.she puts it in his bottle. damon: edwin is meeting larry today because he plans to remove all of his teeth and replace them with dentures. edwin: he has 26 teeth thatneed to be extracted altogether. i'd like to say that that's really rare, but it's not.
you doing okay, larry? yeah, a little bit nervous. okay. you have any questionsabout today? - yeah.- what? when can we get this started? can we get his mom in here? i don't want no pain for him.i wish i could take it for him. hell no.
right now my blood pressureis saying... edwin: well, right nowlarry doesn't feel numb and i think we havea couple of factors playing a role in that. one is that he's very nervousand the adrenaline's flowing. and the other is thathe has infection in there and has had infectionfor some time, so the anestheticdoes not take affect as well. the conditionhis teeth are in now,
you know he's suffered a lotbefore he's even been here. so he knows,he knows what pain is. damon: due to infection, no amount of anesthetic would work on larry's gums. so edwin has decided to postpone the procedure for another day. when contacted, pepsi said that in moderation mountain dew is part of a healthy balanced diet. but i would argue that any drink
with that much sugar and caffeine in it is quite difficult to have in moderation. in fact, despitesitting through larry's ordeal, the biggest shock came when larry told me that he still loved mountain dew and would continue drinking. zoe: hi, honey. oh, it was an amazing day. when you think of amataand now this,
you're seeing the direct effectsof what sugar is doing and the companies,they just don't see it because they're worriedabout making money. they're not on the ground levelseeing the effects and they don't care really. and i spoketo the dentist about like what pepsi have doneabout it and stuff and he said, oh, look, you know,they contacted me and said, look, we really wantto help you out
and, you know,so they bought an rv and another carto help with the kids. but he's like,well, yeah, that's good but they don't really needan rv, they need education. but as he said today-- they need to not drinkmountain dew every day. but as he said, they arenot gonna educate the kids because that meansthey will stop drinking it and that's a disaster for them.
damon: my experience with larry led me to a pulitzer prize winning author who has written extensively on how the food giants have got us hooked on their products. you can't underestimatethe amount of scientific effort that these companies will put into maximizingthe allure of their products. understandingthe sort of fundamentals of how we tasteand why we crave
and what makes food addictive. and i was lucky enoughto spend some time with a legendin the processed food industry. his name is howard moskowitz. and he walked methrough his recent creation of a new soda flavorfor dr pepper. he started with61 levels of sweetness in the formulation,subjected that to more than 3,000 consumertaste tests around the country,
then took that data and out camethe optimum level of sweetness that was guaranteedto send their new soda flying off their shelf. damon: behind the closed doors of industry, this optimal amount of sugar is referred to as the bliss point. ♪ sugar! sugar! ♪ back in the 1970s, howard moskowitz discovered that as you increase the amount of sugar in a product,
people liked it more and more, but then they peaked and if any more sugar was added, then they stopped liking them. so i discoveredthe bliss point and that's what i waschristened, the bliss point. well, fast forward45 years later, it means pasta sauce, it means sodas,it means cereals. creating bliss pointsin products all over the place
is exploitingthe biology of the child. you know, it's createdthis expectation in kids that everything they eatshould taste sweet. so when you getto the vegetable aisle, right, and you're trying to getlittle mike to eat that broccoli and he starts tastingthose bitter notes, right, instead of sweetness,you know, you're in for a load of troubleas a parent. it's understandable that our palates have adjusted
to all of these blissed out foods. when we havesuch a primal desire for sweet, even mother nature herself has created a berry that makes everything taste sweet. so in front of mei have three food items that it's fair to sayi don't enjoy. this here, piping hot chili,this here, sour lemon, and this nasty bottleof apple cider vinegar. but apparently,if i put this miracle berry
on to my tongueand then eat those things, it's supposedto make them taste sweet. no way. that's an orange. i am dubious. when it hit my throatit was really intense, but in the mouth, i don't knowwhat it tasted likes, maybe lemonadekind of thing, wasn't too sweet but it wasnot apple cider vinegar.
this has got me nervous. i do not like chili at all. please work. nothing. it's in my throat though. there's no miracle berryon my esophagus. damn. this experiment with my taste buds made me realize what the food companies have always known
that adding sweetness can make anything palatable. i'm so sorry. well, almost anything. it was now day 35 and the rule of the experiment i was finding increasingly hard to maintain was exercise. my motivation had plummeted. hello, sharon. how are you feeling? oh, well, if you could see me,you would not recognize me
because there's a few pimplesthat have arrived, there's a lot of fatand fullness in my face and my tummy is really quitesomething to behold. i can't fit into my favoritenew shorts anymore, which is a bit disappointing. when did the pimples break out? oh, about 3 days ago. it's probably your liver reacting. often skin conditions are related to
poor liver functioning. so if someone's on a likehigh processed sugar diet, you will see it in their eyes, you will see bagsunder the eyes, you will see it in their skin,whether they're here or they're justreally drawn and lethargic. damon: sugar's effects on me physically were obvious. but my cravings for it and the mental toll it was taking prompted me to explore
what it was doing to my brain. so i took my pimply face to the oregon research institute. this group of scientists, who i'm trusting enormously, own this colossal magnetic sucking machine called an fmri, which they are gonna put me and my brain into. they will then show me images of this high sugar, low fat milkshake and then feed me the milkshake through a special mega straw.
then they will take some photos of my brain and show me how it reacted. now i'm gonna climbinto my brain and see what effect sugarjust had on it. now the first step is that we see what's calleda cue or a trigger, which in my casewas the milkshake. it could be a picture of oneor the real thing. now when we seethis sugary cue or trigger,
a chemical called dopamineis released in our brain. this is an evolutionary urgewhen sweetness was rare, so when we saw it,our brain said get that because you need itfor quick energy and to feel good. now the next step is thatwe get the sugary item. we bring it to our mouthand we taste its sweetness. it's then the chemicalscalled opioids and beta-endorphins
are releasedand we feel terrific. sugar lights up the samereward areas as nicotine, cocaine and sex. it doesn't last long. now if some of us eatsugary foods often enough and establish thishappy feeling of reward, it can create subconscious or mindless habitswhich are easily trigged by more images of sugary foods.
throw into the mixthat the fructose half of sugar also affects our appetitecontrol centers, plus the glucose half affectsour moods and suddenly, we have a very volatilecombination on our hands. one of the very interestingemerging findings in this literature is, the more you eathigh sugar foods, the more you're gonnadesire high sugar foods and want to continueeating them.
♪ give me thatold fashioned morphine ♪ this desire to want to keep eating more sugary foods sounds a lot like addictive behavior. -- who is nowin bordeaux in france published a really cool study where he basically showedthat rats will work harder for sugar thanthey will for cocaine. unlike the drug dealer who is,you know, squared away someplace hiding,
the food giants arein your face everywhere you go. in the boardrooms of these food giants, addiction is a dirty word. when it comes to obesity and illness, the food industry have always argued that people need to take personal responsibility for their food choices. woman: when it comes to eating, fat people are basically very stupid.
but you see,i was away this weekend and it is difficultin friend's houses. okay, mrs. right,no more chocolates. damon: for more than 50 years, the food industry has insisted that obesity is caused by too many calories and not enough exercise, which implies that anyone overweight is simply lazy or greedy. so we just passed halfway
and i've never countedcalories in my life. i'm trying my bestin this experiment. it's hard to be accurate,obviously, but it looks like my caloriesso far are pretty much exactly the same asthey were pre-experiment. and that feels strange because i feel likei'm eating a lot more, but i can see here that when i was eatingpre-experiment avocado
and nuts and stuff, there's a lot more caloriesand fat than there is in sugar. so, in fact, it's half likenine calories per gram of fat, whereas sugar has onlygot four calories. so i can see why we'retold that sugar is okay and don't eat fat'cause it's less calories. but, i mean, the same amountof calories as i did before but my liver has turned to fat,my belly is chasing my lady's, it's doing somethingin my brain,
we know that nowand i'm not feeling full. so i feel that the calories from sugar behavevery differently to other calories. sugar and sweet absolutely depended on this idea that it's just about an energy balance. because if there's something uniquely deleterious about sugar, then they are in the realm that cigarettes are in,
tobacco and lung cancer. but if it's just about eating too much or exercising too little, for calorie of sugar is no different than a calorie of broccoli. they're fine, just tell people to moderate their weight, if you're getting fat, eat less and that's all there is. so the sugar industry -- push this idea
that a calorie is a calorie. it's a calorie and that these calories do dramatically different things in the human body and they always have. damon: it's become clear to me that in their search for profits, the food companies are not only targeting our primal desire for sugar, but are also insisting that all calories are equal.
the result is that we feel like failures if we're addicted or overweight. perhaps the greed that is actually making us overweight and sick is of the corporate variety. how are you? hello, honey.can you show me the belly? have a look, here's the baby. he's actually, he's actually doing little kicks.
great. hello, baby. hello, daddy. bye. love you. bye-bye. - bye. - bye. do you knowhow many sugarholics there are in this country?
millions and millions of them. as you goaround the schoolyard, you watch the young boysand girls of this country and seehow many of the children, they are soft, weak muscles,they are out of condition, they don't havethe energy and vitality they should have. they look like sugar,they don't-- damon: after 45 days,
it became more and more evident that we're just not getting a clear message about sugar. could the fact that sugar's global trade is worth 50 billion dollars have anything to do with it? it turns out that the suppression of the message began in the 1970s, when the us government was reviewing the safety of the sugar for the first time. the sugar association launched a campaign
to ensure their product wasn't vilified. in this case, what the sugar industry didis they stepped in when the evidence wasambiguous and they said, we're gonna kind of make sureit's always ambiguous. to do this, the sugar association paid scientists, hired a pr company and released a report with a press release that read
"scientists dispel sugar fears." they put out thisdocument called "sugar in the diet of man." so no sign that it was paid forby the sugar industry. it looks likea very official document, it's published in a journal. the sugar industrysends out 25,000 copies. this report was then used by the government to determine its findings.
sugar was exonerated and the rest of the world followed suit. jack -- presidentof the sugar association is presenting to his board,and he says, look, there is no conclusiveevidence linking sugar to these chronic diseases and this is the life bloodof our organization. it's the life bloodof our product. if anyone ever links sugarto these diseases,
we're dead. so our job, what we have to do is make surethat there's no consensus. this manipulation of evidence and deliberate muddying of the waters is all sounding very familiar. okay,how's about breaking a nut? i got a better idea.let's take a winston break. that's it! and evidently,it's still going on today.
if you create a list of the things that the tobacco industry did to stall or to fight off public health actions that would curtail smoking, the food companies are doing every single one. paying scientists to do studies that favor industry positions, paying money toprofessional organizations like heart-related and cancer-related organizations,
putting out deceptive statements in the press, characterizing science that doesn't work out for industries as junk science. there is a very long list of these things. tobacco industry then the mall and food industry is doing them all. many of the reviews thatthe final review is that there is no evidencethat sugar is associated with metabolic diseaseof any kind are funded
by the sugar industry. even everything i've learned so far, it was hard to believe there are still scientists defending sugar and fructose. i was curious to meet one of them. i haven't eaten sugarfor nearly three years. and part of this film is thati'm for 60 days eating a very fructosesugar diet. i thought maybe
i'll puton a little bit of weight. i put on six kilos in australia,which is 15 pounds. all hidden sugars,granola bars, low fat yogurt. what's happening? well, what i would say is thatthat's a very powerful anecdote. and i think, you know, it's-- i think that's true, can be true for a lot of people but i would say thatyou have to careful anytime
you do high amount of anything. i was to put you againon a white bread diet, you know, or to put youon a potato chip diet or a french fry diet,you might have a similar effect. i think the issue is thatall of these calories really to be regardedas discretionary. i found john's position on calories so similar to the line that the food industry takes
that i felt compelled to question of source of his research funding. have you ever receivedany kind of funding from coca-cola? you know, i think this isa really important question and it's very important for methat i be transparent. so we've receivedinvestigator initiated, unrestricted fundingfrom coca-cola. what that means is,they had no say
over our questionswe were asking, how we conducted the research,our analysis, our interpretationand our data plan. it's a red flag. for me to hear youeven say that is like, whoa, okay, because this is a companywith 650 beverage products. they rely on fructose and sugar. so what i would say is,you're right.
i mean,we realized this going in, i mean, some may view this as sort of shaking handswith the devil, i guess. i mean,even though that's the case, you know, we're confidentenough in what we're doing, in our protocolsand we're laying everything bare that we could, you know,afford to engage with them. i think we should not take moneyfrom the industry directly. i think it's just morallywrong to do that and,
you know, money is tough. so it's a big dilemmafor researcher as well. but we don't wantto taint the answer. we want to know the truth. just one week later, i saw an ad for symposium on fructose and sweetened beverages. it was sponsored by coca-cola. the keynote speaker was dr. john steven piper.
he spoke about calories and there being no link between fructose and cardio metabolic diseases in the studies. coke madly tweeted about it. and then the host asked the audience... to maybe put together a youtube video to, you know, bring some balance back to those messages that are out there for the public. i found this video on youtube,
but i'm not sure it's quite what they had in mind. ( speaking in foreign language ) as the us leg of my experiment neared its conclusion, what really struck me is that despite all the effects sugar is having on us, in many ways, we've just adapted to its saturation.
and i'm just noticinghow incredible the human body and the human mind is because even though i'm having40 teaspoons of sugar a day, i've adjusted nowto this new reality. my body just acceptsthat this is what i ate and my brain dealswith the moods up and down. i just get on with lifeand it's fine, i can function. but i'm not nearly as efficient,you know, as i was, my fuses are a lot shorter,i'm exhausted
and i think that's howother people live their lives. people are up and downall day, which is their reality,so they accept it and they've never experiencedanything different. and i haveand i'm really excited to get back to that point. if you've always livedthis way, you have no ideawhat life can be like. it's not part of your frameof reference.
♪ just the soundof your voice ♪ now a lot of people will say,well, i eat sugar all the time and you know,i'm perfectly fine. well, what theydon't understand is that hey eat sugar all the timeand they are fuzzy and their mind is cloudyall the time. ♪ goes a long way ♪ damon: sugar has now become so deeply ingrained into the fabric of our society
that some people can't imagine life without it. let's say we took awayadded sugar. well, thenwhat are people gonna do to get that same feelingin their life that sugar gave in terms oftheir values and preferences? damon: but we forget that we didn't always live like this. society has changed. 200 years ago, there wasnot a society in the world
when they had a festivalthat was basing what they ateand what they drank on sugar. damon: today, it has become synonymous with any celebration. but more profoundly, it is one of the simplest ways we communicate love. woman: i think the reason that sugar has become so ingrained is that it actually evokes love.
our brains respond to the chemical effect, the same way we respond to love. if we're feeling upset, what do we do? we have some sugar, now i feel better? if there's not enough sweetness in our life, not enough love? oh, i'll just have some chocolate. damon: with sugar having such complex associations with our hearts, minds and bodies, i wonder if it is having far greater ramifications
for the culture, than we've considered. rudolf steiner said that sugaressentially causes materialism and that developmentof the sugar metabolism and the sugar drug culture developeda materialistic culture. we live in a timeof instant gratification and nobody wantsto wait for anything. with sugar it's energystraight to the brain. eat that pie.
eat that pie.eat that pie. eat that pie. eat that pie. hi, darling. oh, my god, look at this. hello, dude,how's it going in there? that's huge. -- mine too, look at that. oh, no.all right, let's do it. damon: after 60 days and 2,360 teaspoons of sugar,
it was time for the last meal. i thought it would be fitting to cram all the remaining 40 teaspoons into items that could be found in a child's school lunch box. yeah! be gone. one week later, after having all my blood tests done, i assembled the team to hear the final verdict on what sugar had done to my body.
the obvious place to start is the liver. a key marker for determining liver health is a hormone called alt. in the first month alone, mine jumped from 20 below the safety line to 20 above the safety line. so it took you fromsay that best 20% of mento the worst 10%. - in one month.- in one month.
fatty liver is the first steptowards insulin resistance. so once you're onan insulin resistance pathway, then you're on the pathwaytowards type 2 diabetes and then ultimately insulindependant type 2 diabetese. today in australia,nine people had a limb amputatedto that disease. my triglyceride levels which is the fat in the blood went from a healthy 0.08 to 1.5. so you'd hit the risk point.
-- in two monthsof healthy eating. of healthy eating. high triglycerides can also indicate a switch from healthy cholesterol to the damaging small dense ldl cholesterol. small dense ldllines you up for heart disease because they are the ones that are embeddingin the arterial walls,
forming blocks and that'sthe bit you don't want. have all the ldl you likebut don't have those. in terms of weight, i gained 8.5 kilograms overall and added 7% to my total body fat, but more ominously increased my waist measurement by 10 centimeters. this is the dangerous visceral fat. i showed a slight change in the bum expansion text, a variance in the rear flesh wings test
and had great success in the highly scientific belly-slap-make -a-fat-wave-wobble test. i was quite,as you know, quite alarmed that you were able to do thatin such a short amount of time. again, eating --approved healthy foods that everyone'sgoing along thinking, you know,it's totally fine to be doing. and we're worried about the future of thisobesity epidemic in australia
whether it's goingto lead to an epidemic of liver diseasein the long term. but perhaps the most enlightening in my results was the calorie count. as i discovered, my calorie intake was virtually the same as my pre-experiment diet. the big difference was the source of the calories. i'd pretty much done a direct swap of healthy fats for sugar-laden products.
i was lookingat the total calories as well, and very often it would come out as less thanwhat he had eaten previously. the way that calorieshave been measured in the past needs to be re-looked at. this calorie countingand this intense fixation with, and it's our fault as much as-- i take responsibilitybecause that's a message we've been spewing outfor the last 30 or 40 years,
but we really have to tryand turn things around and damon is living evidence,living proof. it is not the calories. it's the sourceof the calories. it's wherethey're coming from. i'm surprised how quicklythings went downhill for you. honestly, to put onso much weight in just 60 days without really changingthe number of calories you were eating, without,you know, eating rubbish
to have such a big effect. ten centimeterson the waist, 8.5 kilos on the body,full blown fatty liver disease developed, well on your wayto cirrhosis, well on your way toinsulin resistance. that's a disaster. you know, i obviouslythrough my research have convinced myself thatsugar is almost assuredly
the problem,the fundamental problem. you get rid of sugarand everything else becomes relatively harmless. we would like to dothe definitive study, but even if we find outnext month that it gets funded, it's still gonna be 5 more yearsbefore i will have results. what possible riskto public health is there in people loweringtheir sugar consumption? this is our problem,and we should all work together
to solve it insteadof pointing fingers and not being productive -- and i would love to seethe food industry come to the table with scientists and healthcare providersand do what's right. damon: the first week of giving up sugar wasn't a lot of fun. frankly, it didn't feel that different from giving up cigarettes.
i had headaches, i was moody and my sleep patterns were terrible. i just tossed and turnedall night and then woke up very early,and as soon as i was awake, i kind of was craving sugar.i feel like i need a hit. it's the first real sign of-- that this is gonna bea bit tricky. but i knew from previous experience that i wouldn't feel like this forever.
and that ultimately, it would all be worth it. because food and sugar has a very strongemotional component, then we have to healourselves emotionally. we have to go through what could bea disturbing experience or an uncomfortable or even awkward experiencecoming off of it. but once you get through it,
which is abouttwo to four weeks, suddenly the desirefor sugar disappears altogether. damon: one month after finishing the experiment, a miracle occurred. our daughter was born. this is her mobile, this is her teething giraffe and this is her lunch. - hi.- say hi, bubby.
damon: but then some other remarkable things happened. after just 2 months of cutting out sugar, my vitality had returned, my skin was brighter, and thankfully my moods had evened out. i've had hundredsand hundreds of people go off sugar just for the reasonof clearing up their mind. and typically,the result i get is, "wow! i had no idea." damon: in terms of my weight,
all i did is return to my pre-experiment diet. i swapped cereal and low fat yogurt for bacon, eggs and avocado without toast. i snacked on nuts and cheese instead of muesli bars, and ate fish or meat with the fat left on and lots of green vegetables for dinners. i lost 6 kilograms with minimal exercise. once you remove thathormone disrupter, fructose, from your diet,
your appetite controlworks again and your weight drops. damon: because i replaced sugar with healthy fats, i felt full againand didn't have to eat as much. consequently, i spent the same amount on shopping as i had during the experiment. whenever you walkinto a supermarket, make an immediateright turn or left turn
for the produce aisle and avoid everythingin the middle. everything in the middleis a huge amount of calories with very little nutrients and what we want to do isreverse that. damon: but the biggest surprise was that all of my blood tests had returned to normal. so no more heart disease risks and no more fatty liver. i think the mostimportant message is that
this is not you geta fatty liver and that's it, it will stay fatty. it actually can be reversedvery easily by taking away the fructose from your diet,taking away all those drinks. i mean, water is a good drink. yeah... damon: in truth, it did take a while for my palate to readjust to my lady's unsweetened cookie.
things tasted bland for the first few weeks, but then i rediscovered the full flavors of fresh produce. for just 5 days, i want you to discontinueor take out of your diet, for 5 days, these foodsthat i'm gonna show you and i promise youthat you will feel 100% better. will you please try this for me?just an experiment. 'cause i'm here tryingto help you
help yourself a little bit. white sugar, candy,cake, ice cream... damon: in the usa, it was recently recommended for men to have no more than 9 teaspoons of sugar a day, and women no more than 6. australia currently doesn't have an equivalent recommendation. i love chocolate. i eat a little pieceof chocolate every day,
but i'm careful and i understandthe adverse affects if i have too much of it. damon: but for me, it's simply to cut out sugar altogether. and that means avoiding artificial sweeteners too. they keep the cravings alive. if you continue to reinforce, it has to be sweetin order for it to be good,
then you're never reallylearning how to do food, good food. damon: i want my daughter to grow up healthy and happy and not waste any of her precious time counting calories or obsessing over weight. by educating our children, perhaps they can avoid the mistakes that our generation has made. do whatever you canto turn fruit and vegetable
into the highlight of your meal. train your kids to love them. that's what every parent'sgot to figure out. how do you get inall those great nutrients? how do you get thosesuper foods into your child and make it taste goodat the same time without spikingtheir blood sugar, so that they cansit down and study and learn and allowfor the creation of genius.
( rock music playing ) that's why we're having the sugar experiment. we had to learn thatthis is not the right way to go in order to help inspire us to get to the next level. damon: i certainly don't think that sugar is solely to blame for our all our current health problems, but given its prevalence in our food supply, lowering our consumption is a great place to start. sugar is not evil,
but life is so much betterwhen you get rid of it. damon: this experiment has proven to me that refined sugar and excess fructose are causing serious damage to the health and well-being of millions of people. and as the debate heats up and the food industry fight tooth and nail to shut the message down, we'll be bombarded withconflicting nutritional advice.
but for me, quite simply, the proof is in the pudding. about 10 teaspoons of it. ( rock band playing ) ♪ hey, everybody,let me introduce myself ♪ ♪ i spread my love on every itemon your supermarket shelf ♪ ♪ i taste so good,make you feel so high ♪ ♪ that i bring you backfor more ♪ ♪ plus, i place my goodiesat your kiddie's eye level ♪ ♪ when you're just aboutto walk out the store ♪
♪ now people will tell youthat i rot your teeth ♪ ♪ i'll make you fat,and give you body abuse ♪ ♪ but forget about that,just take off your clothes ♪ ♪ and have a spamade of chocolate mousse ♪ ♪ sing it, ladies ♪ ♪ oh, mr. sugar,so sexy and right ♪ ♪ we can taste youin our food nearly every bite ♪ ♪ it feels so good,can we have a little more? ♪ ♪ of course you can, ladies ♪
♪ i got white, brown, raw ♪ ♪ sugar ♪ ♪ -- ♪ ♪ and when you wake upin the morning ♪ ♪ and you feel likekind of peckish ♪ ♪ this is oftenwhere you find me the most ♪ ♪ 'cause i'm lurkingin your cereal ♪ ♪ i'm lurking in your yogurt ♪ ♪ and sometimesi'm even found in your toast ♪
♪ but here's a little secreti can share with you ♪ ♪ a secret you shouldput to use ♪ ♪ there's -- teaspoons-- juice ♪ ♪ see, some people thinkthat mr. sugar hangs out ♪ ♪ only with the brightcolored snacks ♪ ♪ but i've been spreadingmy crystals all over your food ♪ ♪ and the companies beenhiding the facts ♪ ♪ i'm in cola, granola,and pasta sauce ♪ ♪ mushy peas, mac & cheese ♪
♪ and the radish from a horse ♪ ♪ and fruit and soup,eat a soup in a satchel ♪ ♪ and mr. sugarlove the term all natural ♪ ♪ white bread, corn chips,muffin mix -- ♪ ♪ mayonnaise, softy,food for the baby ♪ ♪ baked beans for the teensand an energy drink ♪ ♪ and i'm clearly gonna bein any food that's pink ♪ ♪ -- i'm in dressingand a hamburger bun ♪ ♪ with a -- corn syrup-- my fun ♪
♪ muesli balls,even some cigars ♪ ♪ and a whole range of marmaladeand honey, jam jars ♪ ♪ oh, mr. sugar -- ♪ ♪ our addiction to youis quite ridiculous ♪ ♪ we feel so sickwhen you're not around ♪ ♪ that's why a spoonful of mehelps the medicine go down ♪ ♪ now put me in your coffee ♪ ♪ i'm the only thing in toffee ♪ ♪ -- open it down ♪
♪ you should try me in brown ♪ ♪ i'm coming for your kids ♪
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