- The video discusses the prevalence of sugar in American diets and the negative health effects it can have.
- It highlights how sugar activates the brain in a similar way to drugs like cocaine.
- The sugar industry has fought against claims that sugar contributes to obesity and other health issues.
- The FDA is reviewing new nutritional labeling standards that may require food makers to disclose added sugar content.
- Various industries, including cranberry and beverage companies, have lobbied against the proposed labeling changes.
- The video suggests that using a familiar measurement, such as circus peanuts, to express sugar content could help consumers better understand the amount of sugar in their food.

The video criticizes candies for their taste and high sugar content. It suggests that food companies should display the amount of sugar in their products using circus peanuts as a measurement. The video encourages consumers to tweet at food manufacturers and ask them to "show us your peanuts" as a way to demand transparency about sugar content.

Sugar. It's in everything!
Is it good for us? Well, the sugar industry thinks so.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ -♪ ♪ Let's talk about...

As of tonight, you have just 4 days to find your inappropriately sexy costume, whether it's sexy Barney the dinosaur or a sexy candy corn, or, as Playboy's website recently featured, and I swear to you this is true, a sexy John Oliver costume.

That is an actual photo of a human woman dressed up to look like a sexy me.

And the worst thing is, there's more than 1 photo.

I don't know if I've ever been as confused as I am right now.

Although, I'm pretty sure that I'm not as confused as Louis C.K.

Now, at this point, let's agree, sexy Halloween costumes have simply gone too far.

But it doesn't matter, because we all know what Halloween is really about.

This Halloween, Americans will spend 2.2 billion dollars on candy.

Although, to be fair, that does include NECA wafers, which might be better classified as coagulated dust.

But is it really fair to describe sugar as a treat, considering how much we eat it all year round.

Today, the average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, 3 times what we need.

That's equal to 75 pounds of sugar a year for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

That's like eating Michael Cera's weight in sugar every single year.

And look, whilst that's a little less than it was in the late 90s, it's still pretty incredible.

And it turns out that's because we are genetically programmed to.

Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is using functional MRI scanners to learn how our brains respond to sweetness.

Sugar activates our brain in a special way that's very reminiscent of drugs like cocaine.

And I've got to say, Scarface would have been a very different movie if it ended with Al Pacino sitting in a chair, sugared out of his mind on baked goods, saying, say hello to my little Debbie!

Okay, with sugar being so viscerally appealing to us, it's frankly no wonder that food manufacturers put it in everything.

About 35 percent of the sugars that Americans consume come from beverages.

But we're also talking about salad dressings and ketchup and, you know, breads and cereals and crackers.

And the list goes on and on, even to beef and turkey jerky.

We have no idea how prevalent sugar is in almost everything that we eat.

Look at Clamato Juice, the original tomato cocktail with clam.

So they clearly thought, well, look, let's improve the taste by adding sugar instead of thinking, let's improve the taste by removing the clam.

Were it not for the fact that, as we all know, excess sugar is probably not good for us.

Both the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association have warned against the harms of eating too much of it.

And some studies suggest that too much sugar can literally mess with the brain.

Put him in a vat of water, and he finds his way to safety every time.

What he's been Eating is the equivalent of a North American diet, complete with all the fats and sugars we regularly consume.

Now, I don't think that rat is unable to find the island.

I think that rat is saying, -"Fuck that island, there's no sugar on that island.

That's a Pixar movie waiting to happen, by the way.

But the sweetener industry is not going to take the findings of a wet, confused rat lying down.

They're an immensely powerful, 5000000000 dollar industry who fought for decades to project their products' health benefits.

The Sugar Association used to claim their product was a diet aid, with ads positioning it as a cure for the fat time of day, with a woman saying, if sugar can fill that hollow feeling, I'm all for it.

Because yes, nothing says, I don't feel hollow inside, like a woman sitting alone, eating straight from a bag of sugar.

Now, the Sugar Association has gotten a little more sophisticated since then.

As it relates to obesity, there's been plenty of science that exonerates sugar, that clarifies sugar is not, does not contribute to obesity or diabetes.

I'm not saying it's the only culprit, but it's definitely 1 of the key suspects.

Asking what causes obesity is a bit like asking who killed a first grade class's hamster.

Sure, they all killed it in a way, but I think we all know 1 of them killed it the most.

You killed that hamster, and you drove your father away.

To be fair, there are some scientists who dismiss links between sugars and obesity.

We take a complex situation like obesity, and we say, well, gee, if we could just cut down on sugar-sweetened beverages, or added sugars in general, that would solve obesity.

And I think that is a very slippery slope and almost certainly wrong.

James Rippey, who, like Clamato Juice, turns out to contain quite a lot of hidden sugar himself.

He's on the payroll of the Corn Refiners Association, the corn syrup people.

And at 1 point, he was receiving a $41,000 a month retainer from them.

For that much money, you'd expect much grander claims than it doesn't link to obesity.

You should be saying, my research finds that corn syrup makes you an immortal sex god with x-ray vision.

-...and I'm not saying that corporate money distorts science, But when researchers looked at 2 sets of weight gain studies, 1 group with conflicts of interest, like funding from soda companies, and 1 group that was independent, the vast majority of independent studies found direct links between sugar-sweetened soft drinks and weight gain or obesity, and the vast majority that weren't independent found the exact opposite of that.

Particularly suspicious was a research paper titled, I'm So Delicious, attributed to a Dr.

But, look, regardless of whether sugar is terrible for you or the answer to all of life's problems.

Shouldn't you at least get to know when it's being added to your food?

And to their credit, the FDA is trying to take this on.

This week, the FDA is reviewing new nutritional labeling standards, and that may force food makers to not just list total sugar content, but how much sugar they're adding to their products.

Yes, the FDA is trying to get an added sugar category onto their food labels, which is fine, as long as it doesn't distract them from forcing honeycomb cereal to reveal what in God's name their old mascot was.

It looked like some kind of tumbleweed made of merkins.

But look, being forced to reveal how much sugar you are adding to people's food might seem pretty mild, but there is no way the food manufacturing industry is going to let that happen.

The FDA has been swarmed with letters from every conceivable product, from the National Yogurt Association to the National Frozen Pizza Institute to multiple representatives of the cranberry industry.

Now, cranberries are, I think we can all agree, nature's most disgusting berry.

Cranberries taste like cherries who hate you.

Cranberries taste like what a raspberry drinks before its colonoscopy.

The head of the Ocean Spray Company wrote to the FDA saying, Yes, that's the head of Ocean Spray describing its defining ingredient as unpalatable.

It's no wonder they want certain cranberry products to be exempted from the proposed added sugars declaration, which is tantamount to begging, please don't make us tell everyone how much sugar we dump on our garbage bog berry.

But the most revealing plea came from the American Beverage Association, who wrote that, if there is to be an added sugar label, it must be measured in grams and not teaspoons, because teaspoons are, and I quote, well, teaspoons may carry an unfair negative connotation that undermines the factual nature of nutrition information.

What negative connotation does a fucking teaspoon have?

Unless you're thinking of an annoying dude at a diner who's always trying to balance 1 on his nose.

Or the fact that they used to free base heroin.

But neither of those things is the teaspoon's fault.

The only reason the beverage people want sugar to be measured in grams instead of teaspoons is that people understand what a teaspoon is.

Which is why this proposed FDA food label is completely missing the point.

Because if they really want us to understand how much sugar is in our food, they need to find a measurement we can immediately grasp.

And that is why, tonight, we are proposing, in the spirit of Halloween, that product manufacturers express their sugar content in the form of candy.

They taste like an elephant ejaculated into a packet of Splendor.

There is more than 5 grams of sugar in each 1 of these horrifying things.

So, what we're saying to companies is this.

Keep loading your products up with as much sugar as you like on the 1 condition that on the front of the packaging, you display how much sugar it contains in the form of circus peanuts.

So, for instance, 64 ounces of Clamato juice has 88 grams of sugar, or 16 peanuts worth.

A can of Campbell's tomato soup, 5 and a half peanuts.

A package of 20 circus peanuts, obviously 20 circus peanuts, that goes without saying.

But we as consumers must demand Manufacturers adopt this measurement, so please, tweet at them using the hashtag, show us your peanuts.

You ask them to whip out their peanuts and present them to you.

And if they say to you, we don't want to, that's embarrassing.

You tell them again, show us your peanuts.

Because if you are going to shove your peanuts in our mouths, the very least you can do is tell us what we're swallowing.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ -♪ ♪ Let's talk about... Let's talk about Halloween. As of tonight, you have just 4 days to find your inappropriately sexy costume, whether it's sexy Barney the dinosaur or a sexy candy corn, or, as Playboy's website recently featured, and I swear to you this is true, a sexy John Oliver costume. That's right. That...

That is an actual photo of a human woman dressed up to look like a sexy me. And the worst thing is, there's more than 1 photo. I don't know if I've ever been as confused as I am right now. Although, I'm pretty sure that I'm not as confused as Louis C.K. Is about his sexy doppelganger.

That's also real. Now, at this point, let's agree, sexy Halloween costumes have simply gone too far. But it doesn't matter, because we all know what Halloween is really about. Candy. Sweet sugar treats.

This Halloween, Americans will spend 2.2 billion dollars on candy. Although, to be fair, that does include NECA wafers, which might be better classified as coagulated dust. But... But is it really fair to describe sugar as a treat, considering how much we eat it all year round.

Speaker 1: Today, the average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day, 3 times what we need. That's equal to 75 pounds of sugar a year for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

Speaker 0: Holy shit. 75 pounds of sugar. That's like eating Michael Cera's weight in sugar every single year. And look, whilst that's a little less than it was in the late 90s, it's still pretty incredible. So let's talk about sugar.

Everyone loves it. And it turns out that's because we are genetically programmed to.

Speaker 2: Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is using functional MRI scanners to learn how our brains respond to sweetness.

Speaker 3: Sugar activates our brain in a special way that's very reminiscent of drugs like cocaine.

Speaker 0: Sugar activates our brains like cocaine. And I've got to say, Scarface would have been a very different movie if it ended with Al Pacino sitting in a chair, sugared out of his mind on baked goods, saying, say hello to my little Debbie! Say hello! Okay, with sugar being so viscerally appealing to us, it's frankly no wonder that food manufacturers put it in everything. And I do mean everything.

Speaker 4: About 35 percent of the sugars that Americans consume come from beverages. But we're also talking about salad dressings and ketchup and, you know, breads and cereals and crackers. And the list goes on and on, even to beef and turkey jerky.

Speaker 0: We have no idea how prevalent sugar is in almost everything that we eat. Look at Clamato Juice, the original tomato cocktail with clam. 1 serving has 11 grams of

Speaker 3: sugar in it.

Speaker 0: So they clearly thought, well, look, let's improve the taste by adding sugar instead of thinking, let's improve the taste by removing the clam. And... And none of this... None of this would be a problem... Were it not for the fact that, as we all know, excess sugar is probably not good for us.

Both the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association have warned against the harms of eating too much of it. And some studies suggest that too much sugar can literally mess with the brain.

Speaker 5: This rat is perfectly healthy. Put him in a vat of water, and he finds his way to safety every time.

Speaker 3: 5.2.

Speaker 5: Now, look at this guy. What he's been Eating is the equivalent of a North American diet, complete with all the fats and sugars we regularly consume. He doesn't know where to go. His brain has been damaged.

Speaker 0: Now, I don't think that rat is unable to find the island. I think that rat is saying, -"Fuck that island, there's no sugar on that island. I want sugar! I want sugar!" -$5,000. -$5,000.

-$5,000. That's a Pixar movie waiting to happen, by the way. But the sweetener industry is not going to take the findings of a wet, confused rat lying down. They're an immensely powerful, 5000000000 dollar industry who fought for decades to project their products' health benefits. The Sugar Association used to claim their product was a diet aid, with ads positioning it as a cure for the fat time of day, with a woman saying, if sugar can fill that hollow feeling, I'm all for it.

Because yes, nothing says, I don't feel hollow inside, like a woman sitting alone, eating straight from a bag of sugar. Now, the Sugar Association has gotten a little more sophisticated since then. Here is their current president.

Speaker 6: As it relates to obesity, there's been plenty of science that exonerates sugar, that clarifies sugar is not, does not contribute to obesity or diabetes.

Speaker 0: Really? Sugar doesn't contribute to obesity? I'm not saying it's the only culprit, but it's definitely 1 of the key suspects. Asking what causes obesity is a bit like asking who killed a first grade class's hamster. Sure, they all killed it in a way, but I think we all know 1 of them killed it the most.

I'm talking to you, Kevin. You killed that hamster, and you drove your father away. There, I said it. I said it, Kevin. I said it.

Although... Although, to be fair, take him down. To be fair, there are some scientists who dismiss links between sugars and obesity. For instance, this guy.

Speaker 2: We take a complex situation like obesity, and we say, well, gee, if we could just cut down on sugar-sweetened beverages, or added sugars in general, that would solve obesity. And I think that is a very slippery slope and almost certainly wrong.

Speaker 0: That is Dr. James Rippey, who, like Clamato Juice, turns out to contain quite a lot of hidden sugar himself. He's on the payroll of the Corn Refiners Association, the corn syrup people. And at 1 point, he was receiving a $41,000 a month retainer from them. That's half a million dollars a year.

For that much money, you'd expect much grander claims than it doesn't link to obesity. You should be saying, my research finds that corn syrup makes you an immortal sex god with x-ray vision. -...and I'm not saying that corporate money distorts science, But when researchers looked at 2 sets of weight gain studies, 1 group with conflicts of interest, like funding from soda companies, and 1 group that was independent, the vast majority of independent studies found direct links between sugar-sweetened soft drinks and weight gain or obesity, and the vast majority that weren't independent found the exact opposite of that. Particularly suspicious was a research paper titled, I'm So Delicious, attributed to a Dr. Pepper.

But, look, regardless of whether sugar is terrible for you or the answer to all of life's problems. Shouldn't you at least get to know when it's being added to your food? And to their credit, the FDA is trying to take this on.

Speaker 7: This week, the FDA is reviewing new nutritional labeling standards, and that may force food makers to not just list total sugar content, but how much sugar they're adding to their products.

Speaker 0: Yes, the FDA is trying to get an added sugar category onto their food labels, which is fine, as long as it doesn't distract them from forcing honeycomb cereal to reveal what in God's name their old mascot was. What the fuck was that? It looked like some kind of tumbleweed made of merkins. But look, being forced to reveal how much sugar you are adding to people's food might seem pretty mild, but there is no way the food manufacturing industry is going to let that happen. The FDA has been swarmed with letters from every conceivable product, from the National Yogurt Association to the National Frozen Pizza Institute to multiple representatives of the cranberry industry.

Now, cranberries are, I think we can all agree, nature's most disgusting berry. Cranberries taste like cherries who hate you. Cranberries taste like what a raspberry drinks before its colonoscopy. And the industry knows it. The head of the Ocean Spray Company wrote to the FDA saying, Yes, that's the head of Ocean Spray describing its defining ingredient as unpalatable.

It's no wonder they want certain cranberry products to be exempted from the proposed added sugars declaration, which is tantamount to begging, please don't make us tell everyone how much sugar we dump on our garbage bog berry. But the most revealing plea came from the American Beverage Association, who wrote that, if there is to be an added sugar label, it must be measured in grams and not teaspoons, because teaspoons are, and I quote, well, teaspoons may carry an unfair negative connotation that undermines the factual nature of nutrition information. Which is ridiculous. What negative connotation does a fucking teaspoon have? Unless you're thinking of an annoying dude at a diner who's always trying to balance 1 on his nose.

Or the fact that they used to free base heroin. But neither of those things is the teaspoon's fault. The only reason the beverage people want sugar to be measured in grams instead of teaspoons is that people understand what a teaspoon is. No 1 understands the metric system. Which is why this proposed FDA food label is completely missing the point.

Because if they really want us to understand how much sugar is in our food, they need to find a measurement we can immediately grasp. And that is why, tonight, we are proposing, in the spirit of Halloween, that product manufacturers express their sugar content in the form of candy. Specifically, circus peanuts. The most disgusting of all the candies. They taste like an elephant ejaculated into a packet of Splendor.

And... There is more than 5 grams of sugar in each 1 of these horrifying things. So, what we're saying to companies is this. Keep loading your products up with as much sugar as you like on the 1 condition that on the front of the packaging, you display how much sugar it contains in the form of circus peanuts. So, for instance, 64 ounces of Clamato juice has 88 grams of sugar, or 16 peanuts worth.

A can of Campbell's tomato soup, 5 and a half peanuts. A package of 20 circus peanuts, obviously 20 circus peanuts, that goes without saying. But we as consumers must demand Manufacturers adopt this measurement, so please, tweet at them using the hashtag, show us your peanuts. And ask your favorite food manufacturer. Ask them.

You ask them to whip out their peanuts and present them to you. And if they say to you, we don't want to, that's embarrassing. Nobody wants to see our peanuts. They're orange and misshapen and bumpy. You tell them again, show us your peanuts.

Do it, food makers. Expose your peanuts to the world. Because if you are going to shove your peanuts in our mouths, the very least you can do is tell us what we're swallowing. -♪

Speaker 3: 000000000000000

Speaker 0: ♪

What information did you find that is out of date?

What three points did John Oliver make about the American obsession with sugar that got your attention?

Give me the detailed arguments of this video

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Sugar: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)