Bullshit inflation: sugar edition

A couple of items to catalogue in the are-you-sure-this-ain't-a-spoof? file. Firstly, a wonderful new website called Secondhand Sugars™ (they are insistent about the trademark).

Sugars can be harmful to children as early as in the womb. Secondhand Sugars™ are the sugars found in foods and beverages that babies in utero, infants, and children are exposed to involuntarily. The risks include obesity and related diseases like diabetes as well as cognitive and learning problems. Just as we protect children from dangerous secondhand smoke, we should prevent children from being exposed to secondhand sugars.

For God's sake, don't tell them about lactose.

You won't be surprised to hear that the founders of this important new piece of intellectual property hail from California.

So too does Gary Taubes who is busy hawking his new book with articles such as this in the ever-woeful Vox...

The case for eliminating sugar. All of it.

The sugar panic is undergoing an intense period of bullshit inflation at the moment with Taubes competing with articles such as 'Sugar is the "alcohol of the child", yet we let it dominate the breakfast table' by rival anti-carb author Robert Lustig. Taubes says he wrote his latest tome, in part, 'to help drive the policy discussions' but seems to understand that the noose is tightening around us all:

I don’t like the idea of regulation. If regulators feel the evidence is sufficient to go after my sugar, they might decide next week that [the evidence] exists to go after my pastrami. And I’m one of those people who happen to think pastrami is healthy.

Sorry Gary, but that's just the way it goes.