I watched it, and had read the news on this a few months ago. Here is an older summary of Lustig's work and recommendations:
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2009/06/818...ose-sugar-diet
"Lustig prescribes four simple guidelines for parents coping with kids who are too heavy:
Get rid of every sugared liquid in the house. Kids should drink only water and milk.
Provide carbohydrates associated with fiber.
Wait 20 minutes before serving second portions.
Have kids buy their “screen time” minute-for-minute with physical activity.
Fructose is abundant in fruit. Fruit is fine, Lustig says, but we should think twice before drinking juice or feeding it to our kids. The fiber in whole fruit contributes to a sense of fullness. Lustig says it is rare to see a child eat more than one orange, but it is common for kids to consume much more sugar and calories as orange juice.
Eating fiber also results in less carbohydrate being absorbed in the gut, Lustig notes. In addition, he says, fiber consumption allows the brain to receive a satiety signal sooner than it would otherwise, so we stop eating sooner.
Exercise burns only a modest amount of calories, Lustig notes. But it does have other benefits. Exercise improves insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle, lowering insulin levels in the bloodstream. Exercise reduces stress and, therefore, reduces stress-induced eating, according to Lustig. Lastly, exercise increases metabolic rate.
The directive to balance active play with computer, video and TV time is the most difficult one to comply with, Lustig says. But failure to limit sugar intake appears to be the most predictive of poor weight control in children, he adds."
The research result that sugar is a primary food for many tumors was also discussed in the book Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber. If you look through pubmed, there are articles going back at least to 2002 that indicate an increased risk of CHD due to sugars... and if you read the articles, you can see why it is so difficult to isolate dietary factors in disease. In one i read, a "low-sugar" diet was compared to a "high-sugar diet." But the breakfast in the "low-sugar" option consisted of orange juice, wheat flakes, and dairy milk - all containing various sugars, just not sucrose (although there is probably some sucrose in the flakes, too).
More recently, this was published:
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/n...rt-risk?page=2
"Men Who Drank 1 Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Daily Had 20% Higher Risk of Heart Disease Than Non-Drinkers... [factors include:] increased body weight, an immediate effect [of drinking sugar-sweetened beverages]. The second thing is blood lipids. It increases triglycerides and decreases HDL...The drinks also increase inflammatory indicators linked with heart disease, he says, such as C-reactive protein. That has been found, he says, not only in his study but also in several others."