Jo’s Cafe

Over at Adrants, I found this:

Diabetes Association Gets Sugar Money, Says Sugar Unrelated to Disease

While we don’t pretend to be a medical expert, we’ve certainly heard sugar has a little something to do with a disease called Diabetes. Well, after sugary soft drink marketer Cadbury Schweppes entered into a three-year, multi-million dollar alliance, American Diabetes Association Chief Scientific and Medical Officer Richard Kahn seems to think otherwise and told Corporate Crime Reporter, in an interview, “What is the evidence that sugar itself has anything to do with diabetes? There is no evidence.”

A quote from the linked interview is interesting to say the least:

CCR: But you do take money even from candy companies.

KAHN: No, I don’t think we do take money from candy companies.

CCR: Well, Cadbury Schweppes is a candy company.

KAHN: These people give us money for our educational programs. And in return, they can indicate that we sponsor them only on products that are better to eat.

[...]

CCR: But it’s not just the ADA logo on “good” products. Cadbury puts out a press release boasting about its alliance with the ADA.

KAHN: And the alliance focuses on their diet products. It says so explicitly in the press release.

CCR: Why not just say that you are not going to take money from companies that are causing these problems?

KAHN: If we want to prevent diabetes, reduce the prevalence of obesity, help find the cure to diabetes, we have to get funds from someplace.

Gary Ruskin’s Commercial Alert takes up from there:

“Saying that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes is like saying that tobacco has nothing to do with emphysema,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “The American Diabetes Association has been so corrupted that they have sunk to the mentality of ‘tobacco scientists’ who denied the link between tobacco and lung cancer.”

You make your own decision — I don’t plan on stopping my ADA membership over this, but it does make me a little bit uncomfortable to say the least.

No - sugar alone does not cause diabetes, but when you have diabetes, you have to watch your sugar intake. Mr. Ruskin’s statement is partly true, if you get emphysema, you are told to stop smoking, if you do. Just like if you have diabetes, you are told to control you sugar intake. BUT — sugar intake can lead to obesity if a lifestyle is such that you don’t consume anything but sugary foods, or foods that turn into sugar, and obesity “CAN” lead to diabetes.

Six one way, half a dozen another.