MONDAY 5 AUGUST 2013 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Genetics can determine MARKETPLACE • The road to Qatar 2015 why we smell certain — Five continental odours differently qualifications ahead P | 5 P | 6 SCIENCE • Australia opens ‘world’s smartest’ aquarium P | 6 HEALTH • Researchers wonder if low-nicotine cigarettes can end smoking addiction P | 7 Our addiction to WHEELS sugar is linked to obesity, cancer • Seat Leon: An impressive and heart disease – package and soft drinks are among the worst offenders. ALEX P | 11 RENTON reports on the new health war, and reveals why TECHNOLOGY some fruit juices may • Google’s got be as bad for you as the best way cans of fizz. to watch TV P | 12 THE DEMON DRINK: Learn Arabic lessons will resume from WAR ON SUGAR September 1, 2013 P | 13 2 PLUS | MONDAY 5 AUGUST 2013 COVER STORY STEER CLEAR OF SUGAR-FILLED ‘HEALTHY’ DRINKS BY ALEX RENTON work for more people than dentists. healthcare costs are double those fat die young.” He is a medical doctor Though the drinks and food industry of people with a healthy body mass. and professor of clinical paediatrics he tin of 7UP rolls to a stop at still hotly contests it, a scientific The “metabolic syndrome” maladies at the University of California who my feet. I pick it up, scowling consensus is now emerging that associated with insulin resistance has emerged as the guru of an at the kid on a bike who’d fatal problems can be traced back and obesity – many authorities now increasingly noisy international Ttossed it and missed the lit- to excessive sugar consumption. just use the term “diabesity” – are campaign pressing governments to ter bin. The can is green and shiny: Sugary drinks, addiction and obesity expected soon to overtake tobacco as act as aggressively on sugary drinks “Put some play into your every day,” are inextricably linked: Excess sugar the leading cause of heart disease in as they have on tobacco. The two it says. “Escape to a carefree world… in the diet may be a greater cause the world. And perhaps of cancer, too. are seen as directly analogous – Don’t grow up. 7UP.” And underneath, of obesity than fat is. Obese people Thus the “don’t grow up” line on unnecessary habits that cost people in tiny print, the real info (though you suffer from diabetes, cancer, fatty that 7UP tin carries a grinding irony. and society dear. Lustig believes need a calculator to get to the truth): liver disease, dementia and heart Dr Robert Lustig puts it brutally: that children are at the forefront the lemon- and lime-flavoured drink problems to the extent that their “The numbers don’t lie… as a rule, the of the sugar-driven health crisis contains a trace of salt, no fat, no fibre because soft and fizzy drinks are the and 34.98g of sugar – eight teaspo- most efficient way of delivering this ons – and 135 calories. That’s enough “poison”. His word. energy for an hour’s cross-country So the 7UP tin is quite an artefact. running. It’s cheap, too. Half the price It shows capitalism at its most of milk. efficient and rapacious: Where If the stats are right, this teenager ingredients – sugar, flavouring, water in Leith, who threw the empty tin, – costing almost nothing can be drinks 287 cans, or the equivalent, a turned into a profit margin measured year: More sugary drinks than any in the thousands of percent. It other child in Europe. Not to mention illustrates the extraordinary a whole lot more sugar, in breakfast diversion of farmland and forest into cereals, bread, and even chicken the production of the almost useless nuggets. That is in part why Scottish while nearly a billion people on the children’s teeth are the same quality planet are starving. The can is an as those of children in Kazakhstan. icon of the key dietary changes of And perhaps why a 2010 survey of 17 the era, where we upped our simple countries found that only Mexicans carbohydrate intake – sugar – to the and Americans were fatter than Scots. point that it started harming us in Of course sugary drinks make ways never seen before. PLUS | MONDAY 5 AUGUST 2013 3 A monumental battle is just begin- – already in place in some European ning between the sugar and food cor- countries – will be a long while coming porations and governments, which to Britain. The nutrition campaig- know that society can no longer bear ners Sustain and 61 other charities the strain of the polysaccharide habit. and health organisations, including If the 40 years of war between gover- the Royal Society for Public Health, nment and Big Tobacco are anything called on the chancellor to introduce to go by, the fight will be dirty. a “sugary drinks duty” of 20p a litre It’s a feature of modern life that the in this year’s budget. It would raise young have started getting the disea- £1bn a year – some of which, they ses of the old – problems with their suggested, could usefully be spent hearts, their livers, cancers, diabetes on children’s health and free school and so on. That this may be triggered meals. George Osborne stayed quiet; by the changes in our diet has been health secretary Jeremy Hunt said known for at least 60 years. During he was sceptical. Far more influen- the Korean war, US army surgeons tial than Professor Colquhoun, Lustig got a chance to do something unusual: and any eminent academic is the food perform autopsies on lots of young and beverage industry. And that is, of people. These found plaque in the course, busy leaning on the govern- American casualties’ arteries – even ment to avoid any further tampering among the teenagers. But there were with its right to flog sugary drinks as no blockages in the hearts and valves healthy. of the youthful Korean dead. At the It’s a feature of modern The BSDA, to which manufac- time, this bizarre phenomenon was life that the young turers such as Britvic and AG Barr ascribed to the fat load in the GIs’ diet. have started getting hand queries, has stopped insisting But Americans who fought in Korea fructose. That means it’s from fruit,” that there is no proven link between and Japan were fuelled by Coca-Cola I was told. the diseases of the sugar, soft drinks and obesity – its and its rivals; and modern analysis The truth is that, though consuming old – problems with position until a few years ago. (This now concludes that sugary drinks may sugar along with the fibres of fruit is their hearts, their livers, stonewalling claim is still the position have been the villain. better than without, these middle- of Associated British Foods, supplier Most rich nations saw their sugar class healthy drinks may be higher in cancers, diabetes and of half of the UK’s sugar.) Now the consumption increase by 30-40 per- sugar than the Ribena my mother was so on. That this may be defence centres on the “unfair cost” cent between 1970 and 2000. In fooled into giving us children for our triggered by the changes to shoppers of a tax, and the 9 per- Scotland it quadrupled in 60 years. A health. And that, too, had more sugar cent fall in sales, over the past 10 key moment was the introduction of in it than Coke. in our diet has been years, in added-sugar drinks. “Sixty “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS) – a Sugar is sugar – a simple chemical, known for at least 60 one per cent of soft drinks now con- fantastically cheap sugar made from and it makes little difference whether years. tain no added sugar,” they claim. But America’s surplus maize (in Europe it’s crushed from an organic, hand- the BSDA’s stats are dubious: for a we manufacture something similar picked fruit or fracked in a factory start, they include 2bn litres of bott- from sugar beet). American gover- out of corn and beet. And fructose is tells the brain when we’ve consumed led mineral waters – 15 percent of all nment subsidy for the corn farmers just another of the monosaccharides enough. So you drink or eat fructose, soft drinks. And, of course, the carton – and high taxes on imported sugar that make sugar, though it’s the one and then you want more food. Sugary juices contain “no added sugar” – but – made the product cheap and attrac- with a friendly Latin-derived name. soft drinks deliver the fructose fastest as we’ve seen, many have more sugar tive. Though there were issues around In fact fructose is the key to all sugar to the organs that can’t handle it. And, in them than Coke. taste, in 1980 Coca-Cola successfully – it makes it taste sweet. Table sugar of course, they are largely consumed But there are extraordinary things switched to using HFCS. After water, is half glucose, half fructose. The high- by those most vulnerable to diseases: going on in America, for which Lustig sugar is, of course, the major ingre- fructose syrups the drinks manufactu- The poor and the young. For children, – and his 3.6m-hit YouTube film dient in its product. Profit margins rers use are probably – they won’t say every extra daily serving above the Sugar: The Bitter Truth – can take improved, and Coke’s rivals soon jum- – made of 55 percent fructose: more average increases the chances of obe- some credit.