In the New Scientist of 1st September 2012 there is an article giving evidence that sugar causes dementia. I read an article on the same thing in last week's Guardian Weekly and because I work in health I get stats etc and the AIHW (Austn Inst of Health and Welfare) predicts on current trends that the no. of people with dementia in Australia will rise one third by 2020. That might sound like a long time away but it's in less than 10 yrs. Let's hope that the human and financial and social costs of this will finally make people with the power to to change legislation actually do something about this addictive, toxic substance. (But I doubt it.)

The other interesting piece I came across was in The Age 4th October - p. 15. 'Taste link to obesity' which outlines results of an experiment where obese children were found to have a weak sense of taste. They've got this from the NY Times. It says that the authors, 'writing online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, say the reason for the association is unclear, but they suggest that the hormone lepin may affect both body weight and the sensitivity of taste buds.'

So they're guessing - I too would like to speculate: sugar distorts people's taste buds. Since I gave up sugar, lots of things that didn't taste sweet to me before do now. So my sweet tooth is really satisfied easily by things I make with dextrose or with fruit, which now is overwhelmingly sweet in a way it just wasn't when I was still eating chocolate mud cake. Maybe what sugar does to taste buds is exaggerated in the developing childish palate. (We lived in the bush when I was a child and only had sugar when we came to the city. so part of my childhood was blessedly free of it and the holes in teeth etc that came with it.) Maybe the children who were obese in the experiment were the ones who ate most sugar and so destroyed the ability of their taste buds to taste subtle flavours? It will be interesting when more research is done.