Dr. Lustig's Toxic Sugar Theory

Part A According to One Medical, obesity rates have increased over the past twenty years. The article claims that there have been many studies that have linked sugar-filled drinks with obesity, particularly with children. It has also been noted that “rising rates of obesity paralleled an increase in sugar consumption.” HFCS are high fructose corn syrup and can be compared to poison in large servings for humans health. Sucrose is the typical “table sugar” which is a common household item. Most sugar comes from either sugar beets, corn, maple trees or even coconut. High-fructose corn syrup and sucrose according to the article, practically have equal amounts of both glucose and fructose. The article claims, that most doctors report that …show more content…
Lustig’s “toxic sugar” theory because they claim Lustig took an extreme position and easily captivated audiences by declaring fructose to be evil. Three main criticisms from David Katz and other nonbelievers are that Dr. Lustig is not qualified enough to make such claims because he is not a fructose researcher. Also that his information comes from government sources, not from a lab, and that in the past he barely even mentioned fructose, and after the initial paper, he mentioned it again six times but they were practically all responses to his theory not any new information. Dr. Lustig’s published papers focus too narrowly on obese children, therefore, ostracizing other factors that could be found in a well-rounded study, such as age, gender, and ethnicity. By limiting his population to obese children, some variables may have been ignored in his study. In prior research done by Lustig, he had only mentioned fructose, he did not include his theory of “toxic sugar” in …show more content…
The experiment could have been improved by eliminating the data collection method of self-reporting by patients. Self-administered information tends to have inconsistencies and should be taken with a grain of salt. Instead of having only a portion of their subjects have a questionnaire administered by a physician and the other self-report their consumption of soft drinks, they should have had all their subjects visit a physician to make the results more trustworthy. The researchers did not conduct the information themselves, but relied on a secondary party, physicians and their subjects, to report the information for them. It matters if researchers conduct their own research because they are more capable, particularly since the information is not morally sensitive. Inconsistencies are likely to occur since physicians and subjects may have misconceptions of what information is being collected. The researchers did not study animals, researching in animals tends to be a good sign from a scientific study because the information will be from both humans and controlled animals. They only collected data from humans, and throughout the entire experiment, they had participation from nine-thousand people. It cannot be deducted if they used a large enough size in both the control and experimental groups because they did not experiment anything. The study itself does not