In his 1925 book, Food, Health, Vitamins, the pioneer English biochemist, R. H. A. Plimmer made a foreboding but prophetic comment about sugar in America:
“The Americans, with their love of candy, are the largest sugar eaters in the world. Incidentally, cancer and diabetes, two scourges of civilization, have increased proportionately to the sugar consumption.”
We did not heed Plimmer’s warning—our sugar intake continued to increase, as did the incidence of diabetes and cancer. Add to that list the illness that has since grown to be the #1 cause of death: heart disease. Everyone knows excessive sugar is unhealthy, but we accept it, we’re much like the air traffic controllers who fall asleep at their station.
Now a true crusader has taken on the task of awakening slumbering Americans. Gary Taubes, author of the definitive exposition of the sugar-related diseases, Good Calories, Bad Calories, has fired another blast in the New York Times Magazine, under the title “Is Sugar Toxic?”
Taubes invokes the work of Robert Lustig whose YouTube video lecture, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” has gone viral and is approaching one million viewings. Lustig is a respected professor at a respected medical school (UCSF), and he addresses the common sugars—glucose and fructose—like a revival preacher, calling them “poison”, “toxic”, and “evil”. Lustig gives a brief summary of the chemistry that supports his views about sugar, particularly fructose and its role in fat generation, and links them to the rise in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and the common cancers. He closes with a benediction, however, on the natural sugars found in fruits: “When God makes a poison, He wraps it in the antidote.”
Taubes also reviews the work of Dr. John Yudkin who in the '70s warned of sugar's toxicity with his book, "Sweet and Dangerous" (the U.S. version of "Pure White and Deadly," published in England). Yudkin made the link between sugar intake and heart disease when the loudest experts were (wrongly, it turns out) touting the “lipid theory” of heart disease that claimed dietary saturated fat and cholesterol were the cause. A generation was wasted as thousands of “low-fat” foods and sugary drinks were added to our dietary. This campaign not only failed to reduce the incidence of heart disease, it introduced two new epidemics: overweight and type 2 diabetes. Yudkin was so effectively ridiculed by the lipid theory camp—yeah, scientists do that kind of stuff too—that it became politically incorrect to criticize sugar or mention Yudkin’s work. Well, the times have changed—Yudkin, now deceased, is getting new respect and his books have become collector’s items.
Finally, Taubes returns to the subject of sugar and cancer, introduced by Plimmer in 1925. Though the mechanism is not fully understood, there is no question that cancer increases with sugar intake and with diabetes. Studies have shown cancer to be nonexistent in primitive societies who don’t consume refined sugars. Taubes closes by quoting two cancer experts:
Dr. Craig Thompson (head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in N.Y.): I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can.
Dr. Lewis Cantley (director of Harvard Medical Schools cancer center): Sugar scares me.
Taubes’ closing paragraph:
“Sugar scares me too, obviously. I’d like to eat it in moderation . . . but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that’s one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can’t see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows. Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.”