Abstract
Past public health crises (e.g., tobacco, alcohol, opioids, cholera, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), lead, pollution, venereal disease, even coronavirus (COVID-19) have been met with interventions targeted both at the individual and all of society. While the healthcare community is very aware that the global pandemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has its origins in our Western ultraprocessed food diet, society has been slow to initiate any interventions other than public education, which has been ineffective, in part due to food industry interference. This article provides the rationale for such public health interventions, by compiling the evidence that added sugar, and by proxy the ultraprocessed food category, meets the four criteria set by the public health community as necessary and sufficient for regulation—abuse, toxicity, ubiquity, and externalities (How does your consumption affect me?). To their credit, some countries have recently heeded this science and have instituted sugar taxation policies to help ameliorate NCDs within their borders. This article also supplies scientific counters to food industry talking points, and sample intervention strategies, in order to guide both scientists and policy makers in instituting further appropriate public health measures to quell this pandemic.
Highlights
Pandemics and Public HealthWe are in the midst of two pandemics
D-lactate levels are higher in obese adolescents [120], and reductions in D-lactate levels by fructose restriction in obese children correlate with improvements in de novo lipogenesis (DNL), liver fat content, and insulin sensitivity [121], all unrelated to caloric equivalence or obesity
We studied a subgroup of 214 employees who regularly drank sugared beverages before and one year after the ban was put in place [159]
Summary
We are in the midst of two pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic had an identifiable start in January. Without young and healthy people paying into the system, old and infirm people cannot take out The cost of these diseases is not limited to the U.S [5], and NCDs have been declared a global health crisis by the United. The world has recently faced down two other chronic disease pandemics, tobacco and ethanol; both caused by hedonic substances readily available for purchase, and both responsive to public health regulatory interventions. It was not until the U.S.’s Master Settlement Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that we saw a reduction in cigarette consumption and reduction in lung cancer [7]. Individual countries have passed their own public health ethanol regulatory efforts, with clear improvements [8]
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