Sugar, not fat, exposed as deadly villain in obesity epidemic

Sugar, not fat, exposed as deadly villain in obesity epidemic
It's addictive and toxic, like a drug, and we need to wean ourselves off it, says US doctor

• Sarah Boseley, health editor
• The Guardian, Wednesday 20 March 2013 15.59 GMT

Dr Robert Lustig's book Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar has caused a backlash from the food industry, which, he says, wants to 'paint me as this zealot'. Photograph: Alamy

Sugar – given to children by adults, lacing our breakfast cereals and a major part of our fizzy drinks – is the real villain in the obesity epidemic, and not fat as people used to think, according to a leading US doctor who is taking on governments and the food industry..........

It is not a case of eradicating sugar from the diet, just getting it down to levels that are not toxic, he says. The American Heart Association in 2009 published a statement, of which Lustig was a co-author, saying Americans consumed 22 teaspoons of it a day. That needs to come down to six for women and nine for men....