Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
The poison is the dose, sugar is toxic in the way vitamin A is toxic. We need it for vital purposes but too much will create an imbalance in the mechanisms of our body. You cannot say the same for alcohol.
Sugar, or at the least fructose in sugar, is essentially metabolised in the same way to alcohol. It's likely to be the main cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, for instance. Like alcohol, there is a safe limit to how much and how fast you can absorb. Observational epidemiological studies (*) have associated drinking a glass of red wine a day with decreased risk of heart disease but potentially worse risk of breast cancer (probably lot more by now). For sugar that limit is unknown, but I'd guess about 30g/day (less than one 330ml can of coke) is safe enough and even that should be taken with fibre (e.g. in fruit) to stop your pancreas going mental and over expressing insulin. Also, the body doesn't need sugar (or any dietary carbohydrates, for that matter).

(*) this should be taken with a pinch of salt as such studies can't demonstrate cause, so could be other (unaccounted for) behaviours of red wine drinkers that is responsible for this.