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So, are we all junkies?
According to the Harvard School of Public Health, the average American
consumes 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day, equating to an extra 350
calories. Scarily, these 22 mouthfuls of sweetness are easily consumed –
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Gillespie claims food manufacturers are taking advantage of our
collective sugar addiction and are ‘lacing’ non-sweet products – such
as bread, sauces, soups and cereals – with the poison to ensure we stay
hooked. And he’s not alone in this thinking.
Dr Robert Lustig, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of
California-San Francisco and author of the book Fat Chance: The Hidden
Truth About Sugar, says the food industry is purposefully sweetening up
our diets.
‘The food industry has made sugar into a diet staple because they know
when they do, you buy more,’ he told The Guardian in 2013. ‘This is their
hook. If some unscrupulous cereal manufacturer went out and laced your
breakfast cereal with morphine to get you to buy more, what would you
think of that? They do it with sugar instead.’