
Sugar kills more people than gunpowder every year.
Sugar (Sucrose and Fructose) are the biggest killers of our times, and it kills painfully and slowly through metabolic disease.
The problem is it’s addictive nature. Sugar may be more addictive than cocaine.
In my opinion, there is no way to solve this unless we have a safe substitute for our tastebuds.
The artificial sweeteners are not working because they have safety issues. Some “safe” alternatives like stevia have taste and flavour issues.
There is some interesting work happening to solve these problems.
One approach I read about is to isolate the sweetening compound from stevia and figuring out some other way of manufacturing it. This isolated compound does not have the taste issues present in stevia, which are due to some of the other compounds in it.
Another possible solution is inert sugar alcohols. Erythritol for example. Cost effective production of erythritol is a challenge which some companies are working to overcome. The other sugar alcohols are not so inert and cause gastric distress.
There is an interesting direction being explored by this Israeli company, using another sweetener that is available in a tropical plant. Read about it at this link – https://medium.com/s/2069/in-the-future-your-food-will-be-sweetened-with-protein-e7659485731e?
I am sure other approaches will emerge too. The world needs something to reduce sugar consumption. Sugar is the tobacco of our age.