Drug Stores and Sugar
--- helping perpetuate
the Obesity Epidemic
and Type2 Diabetes
in the U.S.A.
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Drug Stores and Sugar
--- helping perpetuate
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(2007 Jan blog post)
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(perpetuating the obesity epidemic and
the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes)
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INTRODUCTION: What is wrong with this picture? There are drug stores, across the country, each with
I guess this fits in with the notion of freedom to make a buck any way you want, including ripping off your fellow citizen whenever you get the chance, no matter the effects on his/her health. However, the same people who support that kind of free enterprise and entrepeneurship are often the first to argue for a "strong America". What is strong about a country full of obese diabetics and pre-diabetics with crumbling knees and other joints?
Suggestion : In other words, it would be appropriate for drug stores to post signs like
Warning: --- before the federal or state (or city) governments have to do so. |
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Killing us softly (slowly)
It took a long time for messages like this to be posted concerning tobacco --- because the effects of over-consumption of tobacco are so long in taking effect. Hence it is difficult to establish an absolutely clear cause-and-effect relationship. The same is the case with sugar. If, when you drank a "soft" drink, by the end of the day you had pain in your knees and the next day you had to ride around in an electric cart because you could not walk because of the pain, you can be sure that there would be tremendous "moderation" in the consumption of such drinks. Unfortunately, the effects are not that immediate. Fed wouldn't act --- states had to In fact, it actually took lawsuits by state governments to make any real in-roads into the mis-information being promoted by tobacco companies. And those lawsuits only took place when the federal government started pushing the responsibility for paying for the medical bills due to smoking effects --- emphysema, cancers, etc. --- onto the state governments. When the states had to shoulder those billions of dollars in costs, they finally took action. It is a good thing that the states took action. The federal government ... either executive branch or congress ... sure was not going to do anything. The federal government is being crippled by lobbyists in cases such as these --- the smoking case, and the sugar / high-triglycerides / diabetes-epidemic case. |
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Agents of obfuscation Just as with tobacco, there are powerful industry groups --- and their paid lobbyists and researchers --- who are quite willing to use widespread "dis-information" campaigns to negate the results of valid research. (The industry groups include sugar growers and importers, drink manufacturers, and food manufacturers --- and I use the word 'food' loosely. Many manufactured 'foods', such as candy, hardly qualify as food, if food is supposed to include nutrients.) Furthermore, these industry groups and individuals (agents of the industry groups, such as doctors on the dole) are eager to dis-credit and hide cases where there is a quite clear association between sugars and obesity --- and between sugar and various types of breakdown of body parts and functions. For example, there are still licensed doctors with M.D. degrees who adamantly claim that there is no clear evidence that sugars are a cause of dental cavities. I knew a guy who was missing many teeth from his mouth because, as a youth, he used to sleep with candy in his mouth. He associated sugar with the loss of his teeth. How do these doctors manage to explain away cases like these? It would be quite entertaining to hear their explanations. Some other component of the candies, perhaps --- like the coloring? Come on, doc --- the candy is almost all sugar. These doctors should be required to sleep with candies in their mouths for about a year, to prove their claims that sugar is harmless to teeth. I doubt if any of them would risk their teeth on that experiment.
(Note: Sucrose is a di-saccharide -- two sugar molecules connected to each other --- a glucose and a fructose molecule.) Unfortunately, there are doctors with M.D. degrees and Ph.D. degrees, and with no social conscience and no ethics but with a lot of greed, who are in a position to review medical papers and write (or re-write) summaries of the results of medical research. In other words, there are licensed doctors who skew the summaries of results away from any indication that sugars (and starches --- which are long chains of sugars --- in flours, potatoes, rice, etc.) can have any adverse effect on human health. With drug stores (and doctors) like these, who needs enemies? A major threat to human health in the U.S.A. is in many of the humans among us --- and in the sugars (and starches) that they promote. |
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A Hall of (drugstore) Shame : Below is a sampling of some companies that are 'pushing' pharmaceutical-products-PLUS-super-sugary-products. They are eager to sell you all the sugar you can eat for every holiday --- Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas --- AND every day in between. (Their sugar-products ads are in the newspapers EVERY WEEK.) And then they will sell you the diet-packages, insulin, fat-and-sugar blockers, and any other drug that the drug marketers can convince you to take --- to deal with the sugar-effects --- WITH NARY A WARNING THAT OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH HIGH-TRIGLYCERIDES (greater than 150 milligrams/deciliter) CAN ALMOST CERTAINLY AVOID THE INSULIN, FAT-AND-SUGAR-BLOCKERS, DIET PACKAGES, and so on, IF THEY WOULD SIMPLY (and inexpensively) CUT WAY BACK ON THE JUNK-FOOD-AND-DRINK THAT IS SOLD RIGHT BESIDE THOSE PHARMACY SHELVES. The drug stores could do a great service to the country by, at the very least, suggesting portion control with the junk that they are selling ... mentioning the very real consequence of ill-health effects that WILL significantly impact quality-of-life and extent-of-life if over-consumption of added-sugar products is a habit. |
Yes ... Expect extra sugar at CVS. |
Yes ... Get More! sugar at Ekerd's. |
'The Pharmacy America Trusts' --- to supply added-sugar products with no warnings? |
... especially sugary ingredients. |
Another added-sugars outlet. |
Another added-sugars outlet. |
A personal-sugars outlet. |
Another added-sugars outlet. |
Another added-sugars outlet. |
Another added-sugars outlet. |
... an award from Pfizer for those servicing |
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... a Walmart award for excellence in supplying |
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In conclusion :
I would love to see the criteria by which the Pfizer and RESPy
pharmacy awards are given. Any chance that it is based on good citizenship rather than on sales figures? Note the irony of those drugstore tag lines:
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For further information : In case I do not return to update this page, here are a few keyword WEB SEARCHES that you can use to provide updates. |
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