Sugar = Drug?

I want to dissect a provocative little article on one of my favorite punching bags, sugar.

It demonstrates, in my reading, the distance between basic fact and effective massaging of cultural values.

When it comes to sugar, a simple and highly refined carbohydrate, I agree that Americans eat too much of it.

I'd be more than happy to support a tax on sugar in order to reduce consumption.

I'll even agree that it works on the body in the same way as a drug.

Start with this message and get parent's attention.

How we talk about sugar, however, is important as is how we talk should seek to further the goal of decreasing consumption and increasing health.  I doubt beginning the conversation by talking about sugar as a drug will further that goal.

We can talk about it as a health risk.  We can talk about obesity as a threat to national security.  We can talk about lots of things in order to build a degree of taboo to sugar's over use.  Describing sugar as a drug, however, just makes us sound like a bunch of chicken-little fundamentalists screaming about fire and brimstone. 

It doesn't matter if it is true, if you do not deliver your message in believable fashion.  Going full-
fundamentalist on the public hurts your cause because people stop listening to you.  If you act like a nut, people will assume you are a nut.  First impressions are difficult to overcome.

Run with this message and turn people off.

I am just old enough to remember when drunk driving was not considered a serious offense but something to be laughed about.  Public education and the stigma that came to be associated with the practice did more to reduce it prevalence than locking up drunk drivers.  And the stigma was built up slowly with small doses of emotion and the education of children, who then took the message back home to their parents.

I also remember when nurses smoked on the hospital floor.  I'm sure that the increased taxes on tobacco have played a major role in reducing smoking in America but the shaping of values that changed our perception of smoking so that it was seen as dirty and polluting did even more good in the battle against nicotine.  That change of perception began slowly.  It is good to remember how the change began and not assume the current state happened with one quick blitzkrieg.

John Wayne did not need to attack cigerette smoking to get people to think about reducing their consumption of it.

John Wayne did not have to criticize anyone for not getting a regular physical to make it more acceptable to get one. 

The ad does not need to call nicotine a drug to encourage people to smoke less.

We are closer to the beginning of the campaign than the end.  Many parents have not yet heard the harder critiques of sugar and its impact on health.  If your first message to parents is that they are bad parents poisoning their children with sugar, you won't get very far.  If you start, however, by pointing out the effect of "too much" sugar and go from there, you will have a greater likelihood of success.