Book {Sugar Nation}

I partly read and partly skimmed Sugar Nation: the hidden truth behind America's deadliest habit and the simple way to beat it.  I heard about this book because I stumbled upon a Sugar Nation feed on Twitter (@sugar_nation).  I love Sugar Nation's tweets! They post a lot of informative and encouraging words about what you put in your mouth. Then I realized Sugar Nation is a book!

So, I picked it up at my local library. It was published in 2010 by Jeff O'Connell. He is a Men's Health writer who got a big wake-up call when his estranged father ended up with type 2 diabetes. Now, Jeff is a tall skinny man, so there is not a weight loss issue for him. However, with his father on his death bed, Jeff decided to go to a doctor and get checked out for signs of any health problems. What do you know, turns out he was pre-diabetic.  I read the first 50 pages solid about Jeff's doctor visit and the subsequent chapters about what diabetes is and what it does to your body. I'm not really interested in details about the disease, but I knew that I would get some good morsels about using food for health.  Here are the main points from this book that anyone should write on a stone tablet and erect over their mantle think about.

• Doctors use pills for nutrition-based illnesses when they should be using nutrition.
• Nutrition can treat and even reverse diseases like diabetes.
• Doctors are not well educated about nutrition.
• Sugar is the devil.
• Processed food is the devil.
• "Sugar" products are found in many, many foods.
• Nutrition and exercise should be 95% of your treatment plan. It should have the same dedication and importance as popping a pill that your life depends on.
• You don't have to be fat to have health/nutrition problems.

This book is extremely informative. I won't go into detail here. If you are interested, you should read it yourself.  If you have a family member or friend in need of nutritional help, they need this book. If you are interested in nutrition and want to do your research (like me), read it. It's very focused around diabetes, but you will find that there are common denominators that every book or documentary about food-based health will all repeat over and over and over.