Please Explain: Sugar

The Leonard Lopate Show | May 10, 2010

Please Explain is all about sugar—from how it’s grown to how it’s refined to how its metabolized by the body. Elizabeth Abbott, author of Sugar: A Bittersweet History, describes how the cultivation of sugar is linked with slavery, the Industrial Revolution, and the fast-food industry. And Dr. Wahida Karmally, Director of Nutrition at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University, explains how the body processes sugar, how the average amount of sugar Americans consume has greatly increased over the last few decades, and how too much sugar affects our health and waistlines.

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