Soft drinks (Soda) companies don't want you to know this

The fact that it took 50 years before the first links between smoking and lung cancer were published in the British Medical Journal and before effective regulation was introduced is testament to how Big Tobacco was able to defend its practices. Key to the strategy was denial, planting doubt, confusing the public, buying the loyalty of scientists, and giving ammunition to political allies.

The similarities between Big Tobacco and the sugar industry are disturbing. As a recent publication in JAMA Internal Medicine showed, the sugar industry paid three influential Harvard scientists to downplay sugar's role in heart disease and to shift the blame to fat.

Last year, the New York Times exposed that One of the famous soda company paid millions of dollars to fund research that downplayed the role of sugary drinks in obesity and push lack of exercise as the main factor.

And, according to one former UK shadow health minister, the incorrect advocacy of a low-fat, high-carbohydrate, and high-sugar diet by "morally corrupt scientists and politicians who allowed themselves to be manipulated by food suppliers" is to blame for global obesity.

There is nothing wrong with the occasional treat, but sugar has no place as part of a "healthy balanced diet."

Similar to smoking, any further regulatory measures to reduce sugar consumption, such as banning of sugary drink advertising and dissociating sugary drinks with sporting events, will have a further impact on improving population health within a short time.

The science is more than sufficient; the case against sugar is overwhelming. Sugar is the new tobacco, so let's start treating it that way.