T
HE Gallery of Modern Art in the centre of Glasgow is one of the
city’s best known landmarks. But what is perhaps less well known is that the gallery is housed in the former mansion of 18th century merchant William Cunninghame.
Despite its opulent grandeur and beautiful architecture few people realise it was built on the profits from two of the most common addictive and destructive substances ever to blight the health of mankind, tobacco and sugar.
While the dangers of smoking and alcohol have been widely publicised for some time only now is the full extent of how sugar may be fuelling a rise in potentially fatal health conditions being revealed, earning itself the nickname of the White Death.
Scotland’s love affair with sugar goes back a long way. It first blossomed at the turn of the 18th
century during which
no less than four sugar refineries were built in Glasgow.
By 1700 Scotland was consuming 1000 tons of sugar a year. By 1870 this figure had risen to over 70,000 tons and it now stands at 200,000 tons – that’s 40Kg per person per year or about one and a half standard 500g bags of sugar per person per week.
In 2008 the Food Standards Agency Scotland undertook a survey of sugar consumption among Scotish children. They found that added, so-called extrinsic, sugar constituted 18 per cent of total dietary intake at a time when the Scotish Government was aiming for a target of less than 10 per cent and the World Health Organisation was advocating less than 5 per cent, a figure which was adopted by the Scotish Government this year.
That same survey found 25 per cent of 3 to 7-year-olds had been treated for dental decay. By the time children reached 12 to 17 years of age that figure had risen to 75 per cent. According to
82 September 2015
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