Living in Australia we are well aware of the effects of extended sun exposure we are constantly reminded to “slip, slop, slap” and everyone makes a huge deal about the detrimental effects of sun damage. Apparently the situation is SO bad that solariums or sunbed tanning has no become illegal through most parts of Australia. However melanoma is only accountable for 2000 deaths in Australia every year, that’s around 6 people a day and whilst some people may say that that is 6 too many when you compare the statistics to the 14 Aussies that die each day from alcohol related deaths and the 430 people that are hospitalised for the same thing and alcohol is still legal it makes you wonder who the government are really looking after. The Government place taxes on all alcohol sales so whilst more than double the amount of people are dying from alcohol consumption than sun damage it seems to be okay because someone is profiting from it.
Let’s look at another example. Illegal drugs cause 15 deaths a day! Huge right you can see why they are illegal BUT the deaths caused by tobacco each day are 40 people!!! Why are cigarettes still on the market? Who makes these calls? Who decides that one of the most detrimental things to our society is okay because you can place a tax on it and the Government can make money from it? Why isn’t anyone addressing these issues?
Here is the real quencher the one sole perpetrator for the highest cause of deaths in Australia every single year… Obesity. 55 Australians die every day from illnesses caused by obesity. That’s 1 person every 26 minutes dying from a preventable disease. Coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease or heart attack. And yet you can walk into a supermarket or servo at any age and buy a drink that may contain 50grams of sugar or more!
According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the maximum amount of added sugars you should eat in a day are (7): Men: 150 calories per day (37.5 grams or 9 teaspoons). Women: 100 calories per day (25 grams or 6 teaspoons).
So this one beverage has already put you over that recommendation.
Allowing some slack for the fact that most people know that sweet carbonated drinks are very high in added sugar and if you are going to have one it is hopefully usually a treat. What I really want to focus on is the fact that seemingly healthy foods like bread and cereal that most people consume every single day that may even have the heart foundation tick of approval contains added sugar you probably had no idea was there.
Even Muesli is deceiving, rolled oats…great! Nuts and seeds, awesome! Stacks of dried fruit… NO GOOD! The main ingredient in dried fruit other than the fruit itself is SUGAR! And once a fruit has been dried out its already lost most of its nutritional goodness anyway, so you might as well have added sugar to your muesli!
Most people don’t know these things, not everyone has the avid interest in nutrition that I do. In a world where obesity is the number one cause of death in most western countries why aren’t we looking at what the cause is, why aren’t we doing more about this quite easily preventable disease why aren’t we changing our ways… Because someone is making money off it.
The food production industry is making huge amounts of money from killing people!
Sugar makes food taste better, and if food tastes good you’re going to buy more of it. So ill add sugar to my product.
And I might even label it “low fat” or “no fat” and you will think it’s healthy because seeing the word fat reminds you of being fat. But unfortunately just because a product has no fat doesn’t mean that it won’t make you fat!
Sugar is a great source of fast acting energy but if you don’t use up all the sugar you eat in a day doing a lot of exercise at the end of the day it will still turn in too fat in your body and stay there as stored fat.
Actual fat in foods like dairy, butter, eggs and nuts isn’t that bad because it fills you up, you can’t eat a lot of it. Unlike sugar that you could probably eat endlessly without noticing.
If you are overweight, obese or getting there. I do not blame you! The obesity epidemic is growing and growing with no signs of slowing down. The amount of knowledge you need to have to eat well these days is ridiculous. You shouldn’t need a Diploma of nutrition just to make sure you don’t end up overweight. If a product says it’s healthy, IT SHOULD BE!
In life if you lie, that makes you a bad person, but in the marketing industry apparently it just makes you a good business operator.
Okay so big ruthless, heartless food production companies making money don’t care about you. It’s a cruel world. There’s people out there starving and there’s companies making money off making people fat. I personally could never harm another human for my own personal gain; the world is a horrible place.
But SURELY our government should be doing something?! If you can put a tax on Tobacco and alcohol, if you can ban solariums why can’t you do something about the number 1 leading cause of death in the country? What are you doing for our people?
So what do I propose? Put a law in place that limits the amount of added sugar a company can put in a product per 100g. If you knew that all foods that you could buy would fall into a healthy sugar range it would take the guess work out of shopping and trying to eat healthy it would vastly reduce the amount of calories the average Australian consumes daily therefore lowering opportunity to gain weight daily and lowering rick of preventable diseases.
Information and education on the cause and effect of obesity is far too low, More Australians need more knowledge on the number one threat to their health.
The Government need to be doing more not just to educate their people but to SAVE them. To me the answer is simple; there should be no question as to the action that needs to happen to save thousands of Australian lives.
Now this isn’t saying that eating less and doing more exercise wouldn’t be a huge help as well and that the whole fault of obesity falls into the manufacturers and the Governments hands but it would seem they have done NOTHING to help fix a problem that would be quite easily helped and effects so many.
If you can act against drugs, if you can act against cancer… why can’t you act against sugar!?
There will be so much more to come on this topic as i attempt to change the world and make it a healthier place
healthandselina 