Bittman's Great Summary

This one was so compelling, I'm reposting it.  It is foundational material in my book.

"The study controlled for poverty, urbanization, aging, obesity and physical activity. It controlled for other foods and total calories. In short, it controlled for everything controllable, and it satisfied the longstanding "Bradford Hill" criteria for what's called medical inference of causation by linking dose (the more sugar that's available, the more occurrences of diabetes); duration (if sugar is available longer, the prevalence of diabetes increases); directionality (not only does diabetes increase with more sugar, it decreases with less sugar); and precedence (diabetics don't start consuming more sugar; people who consume more sugar are more likely to become diabetics).

The key point in the article is this: "Each 150 kilocalories/person/day increase in total calorie availability related to a 0.1 percent rise in diabetes prevalence (not significant), whereas a 150 kilocalories/person/day rise in sugar availability (one 12-ounce can of soft drink) was associated with a 1.1 percent rise in diabetes prevalence." Thus: for every 12 ounces of sugar-sweetened beverage introduced per person per day into a country's food system, the rate of diabetes goes up 1 percent. (The study found no significant difference in results between those countries that rely more heavily on high-fructose corn syrup and those that rely primarily on cane sugar.)"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/its-the-sugar-folks/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

This article references a study (linking in the article) that is about as good as it gets in health science. Bittman's summary is spot on - until he gets to his politics, which I could do without.  Coercion hasn't worked well at all with regards to food and health.  I say let's try cooperation.