Editorial: No way to sugar-coat it: Obesity is a health risk

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Updated: March 8, 2012 8:09AM

Nobody is overly sweet on sugar these days, but a bunch of scientists out West have taken concerns about Nature’s sweetener to an extreme.

In a paper published last week, a team of scientists in California argued that sugar is so addictive it should be heavily taxed and regulated, like alcohol and drugs. They even want to set a legal age for buying sugar.

That’s excessive. A heaping spoonful of sugar may be more than we need to help life’s medicines go down, but a world with nothing but spinach on the menu strikes us as pretty bleak. And even spinach has natural sugars.

That said, there’s no denying we have a national problem with obesity, and sugar is heavily to blame. Americans eat and drink roughly 22 teaspoons of sugar every day, three times as much as they did 30 years ago. Not all of that comes out of the sugar bowl. Much of it is hidden inside processed food and even bread and cereal.

On Thursday, First Lady Michelle Obama plans a three-day national tour to mark the second anniversary of her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity. We should listen to her and not to such naysayers as U.S. Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-Tenn.), who last week filed legislation to stop what he called “taxpayer-funded attack ads” against fattening food and drinks. Oh, please.

As shown in the graphic below, obesity contributes to a wide range of health problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 112,000 deaths in the United States are associated each year with obesity, and the total medical costs came to $147 billion in 2008.

Just this week, a new study of more than a million people found that people who carry extra weight report more everyday pain.

How bad is it? Over two decades, obesity rates have doubled in adults, and the percentage of adolescents who are above their normal weight has tripled. The needle on the nation’s bathroom scale is pointing in a scary direction.

But let’s be sensible. Let’s eat more healthfully and get more exercise. And let’s not listen to scientists who want a new Prohibition, this time for sugar.