Sep 13 2016

Organic Sugar Scam

gatorade-organicGatorade, which is basically sugar water with a little salt and potassium added, is extending their strategy of making sugar water sound healthful by marketing a prominently labeled “Organic” version of their product: G Organic.

What makes the product organic is that the sugar is sourced from organic sugar cane. This is an excellent example of how marketing creates then exploits a health halo around products even when it makes absolutely no sense.

Organic Sugar

The sugar industry, and producers of high sugar products, have been engaged in a campaign over decades to market sugary products to the public while somehow convincing them that the products are not bad for them, and in fact may be good for them.

The science is pretty clear. Having a diet high in refined sugar is a major health risk factor. It increases triglycerides, which increases risk of heart disease, it causes tooth decay and obesity, which leads to diabetes and other health issues.

But sugar makes things taste great. We evolved to crave sweetness and the calories it signals, because we evolved in an environment where calories were limited and precious. Now Western societies generally live with abundance, and our evolved taste results in unhealthy excess.

The food industry, like all markets, is out to make money, which involves selling people food. Marketing forces favor foods that taste great, but also foods that have a health halo. These two market forces are often in direct conflict. What to do?

The overall strategy of the food industry is to make food products that contain enough fat and/or sugar to taste great, and then manufacture a health halo out of pseudoscience, diversion, and deception.

There are lots of ways to create a fake or deceptive health halo for food. “All natural” is perhaps the most popular. The label means nothing in reality, but capitalizes on a long-standing existing health halo of nature.

Sugar cane itself is a recent manifestation of this. Sugar cane used to be the symbol of the refined sugar industry, which had a negative health halo. The industry has turned to using cheap sources of sweetener, like corn syrup or sugar from sugar beets.  This created the opportunity to recast sugar cane as a more natural alternative.

This is all grade A BS, however, Refined sugar is refined sugar. Regardless of source, you end up with little grains of sucrose. There is no possible difference in the effects this sucrose has on your body because the molecules came from beets vs sugar cane, or any other source.

There has also been a lot of angst over high fructose corn syrup, where the ratio of fructose to glucose is a little higher than in sucrose. As I discussed in detail in a previous article, the evidence shows there is essentially no difference. Sugar is sugar. All of the discussion about the type of sugar is nothing but a diversion from the basic fact that you shouldn’t have high levels of refined sugar in your diet.

Another strategy to manufacture a health halo is the entire organic movement. There is no evidence that organic anything is more healthful or safer than conventional products. This is especially true of products derived from produce, like sugar. Again – the source is irrelevant to the sugar molecules.

Organic sugar cane is therefore a double deception. It’s still just sugar.

Other health halo strategies include adding vitamins, which is often unnecessary. Herbal products, like ginseng, are also added for their health halo. Also, products are marketing as low-sugar, but contain high fat to improve taste, or low-fat, but contain high sugar to improve taste.

Distorted Science

There is also a recent report that the sugar industry secretly funded research 40-60 years ago meant to demonize fat as a major health risk in order to overshadow the health risks of too much refined sugar. The strategy apparently worked, for a while, but now it is all coming to light.

It is always difficult to say what conclusions the scientific community would have come to if the sugar industry had not put its thumb on the scale, but at the very least there should have been transparency in research funding. The industry simply says that such transparency was not the norm 60 years ago, and they are right, but it doesn’t change the basic facts.

Sports Drinks

Gatorade, of course, also markets itself as a sports drink, with marketing that implies it enhances athletic performance. There is a bit of legitimacy here. If you are engaged in extreme physical activity, involving lots of burned calories and sweating, it is reasonable to rehydrate with a drink that has some electrolytes and some calories. There are a couple of caveats, though.

The evidence shows that sports drinks do not prevent a drop in sodium during exercise. The reason sodium drops is because sweat is salty, but then we replace sweat with straight water. Electrolyte drinks are supposed to correct this imbalance. However, products like Gatorade still have much less salt than what we lose, and so aggressively rehydrating even with a typical sports drink can still lead to a drop in sodium.

The problem is that electrolyte drinks that are properly balanced do not taste very good. So again, the same dilemma for the food industry between taste and health. The solution – create a sort-of electrolyte drink that is not much different from regular water in terms of health but has a manufactured health halo.

As is often the case, the story of sports drinks is a bit complicated. There are products that are higher in electrolytes, and some with less sugar. For the average athlete, plain water is fine. For extreme athletes, electrolyte drinks are better, but you have to choose the right one. You can also simply drink orange juice or other fruit juices, and for extreme athletes even add a little salt. Think carefully about the calories you are consuming vs the calories you are burning, however.

You also get electrolytes from food, by the way. So just eat some salty snacks with the water and you’re good.

Conclusion

Organic sugar cane sweetened sugar water with a little bit of electrolytes, but not enough to be really useful, is a great marketing ploy that capitalizes on a number of manufactured health halos, but in the end it’s just sugar water.

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