30 most vicious John Oliver take downs
By Jeremy Dick
27. Pointing out the dark side of eating sugar
Doing a show close to Halloween was the perfect time for John Oliver to talk about sugar consumption on Last Week Tonight. He began with some jokes about how crazy “sexy” Halloween costumes have gotten, with even a “sexy John Oliver” costume for sale. But at least that silly stuff isn’t dangerous to our health, unlike the copious amounts of sugar loads of holiday candy will bring.
Supposedly, the average American consumes 22 teaspoons of sugar a day. That comes out to 75 pounds of sugar eaten in a year. Can we continue to call it a “treat” when it’s something a lot of us put into our bodies by the barrel all year round? In fact, much of the time, we don’t even realize how much of it we’re actually eating.
Beverages, for example, are a huge source of sugar consumption. Even the Ocean Spray company referred to the taste of cranberries as “unpalatable”, although it is the chief ingredient of their drinks, to justify dumping sugar into their products. Oliver also thought it was funny how the American Beverage Assocation insisted on measuring the amounts of added sugars in grams instead of teaspoons. It’s all a ruse to trick people into eating more and more of that sweet sugar.
Next: 26. Dr. Oz