I saw Dr. Lustig's video when it first came out and I was impressed that he would come out and criticize so near and dear a product to us as sugar. (and yes, I understood the biochemistry part of the lecture)

I think people have too narrow a view of what "toxic" means. Obviously, the statement "sugar is toxic" is partly for shock value. But it's also true that what Dr. Lustig is saying is that sugar leads to conditions which are unhealthy and can eventually kill us, such as fatty liver, insulin resistance, and advanced glycation end products (basically, the same thing as caramelizing sugar in a pot, except it's happening in your arteries).

Bottom line is that we eat TOO MUCH white sugar and HFCS. Neither table sugar nor HFCS would be much of an issue if we ate them in amounts that resemble their natural availability in whole foods, which is very little indeed. Instead, we put sugar/HFCS in EVERYTHING and we consume MASSIVE quantities of both over the course of a year, far beyond any amount that we could have evolved to deal in the short time since industrial food production rose to prominence. All of us should strive to reduce the amount of sugar we consume.

I'm also glad that Dr. Lustig pointed out the unintended consequences of the villification of saturated fats. The low fat craze created foods that were low fat, but tasted awful. So what did food companies add to make their products taste good? Sugar! Not only were we afflicted with the problems of a high sugar diet, but these new foods usually included even more calories than the "high fat" versions!

I think this view that all sugar is unhealthy in the quantities we're eating is better than the view that is popular even now that "sugar is healthier than HFCS". That lead to the Corn Refiners Association to lobby the FDA to allow them to call HFCS "corn sugar" because many consumers want to avoid HFCS and think sugar is healthier. Neither is healthy in the amounts that most of us consume them, which is really the point that Dr. Lustig was making.