The obesity epidemic is global and is a major public health issue. Why has it happened? Robert Lustig, a pediatrician at the University of California San Francisco, argues in his new book that sugar is to blame. According to Lustig, food companies add more sugar to drink and food than in the past. He also blames governments who have also been complicit, since they have been captured by the fructose producers and the food and drink industry. Politicians have also wanted food to be cheap so as to remove it as an election issue. Below is a brilliant lecture by Lustig on the role of sugar in the obesity epidemic.
The Berkeley Earth Project , an independent study of global warming, has found that the earth has become a degree warmer over the past half century. However, the statistical uncertainty surrounding pre-1920 estimates makes it very hard to say much about long-term trends - click here for graph . This is one of my concerns with the global warming debate - we simply don't have trustworthy long-run data which looks at temperature changes over the last millennium (or two). My second concern with the global warming debate is that it is very hard to prove any sort of casual link between global warming and human activity. The scientists may be able to show correlation between global warming and our production of carbon dioxides etc., but correlation is not causation. My third concern with the debate is that those who are sceptical or agnostic are stereotyped as flat-earthers or intellectually-challenged crackpots. This only stifles debate and the progress of science itself.