REVIEWS
FOOD SCIENCE Is sugar so bad?
The case against sugar
Author Gary Taubes
Publisher Portobello Books
Pages 365 Price £14.99
ISBN 978-1- 84627-637-8
Reviewer Dennis Rouvray is a freelance science writer based in Surrey, UK.
Recent years have witnessed a growing chorus of dieticians, nutritionists, clinicians and even politicians warning us to cut down on the amount of sugar we consume. The clamour has now become so great that food companies are scrambling to reduce the sugar content of their products and are competing to announce new products that are either lower in sugar or sugar- free. Why has this trend to demonise sugar become so entrenched in our current thinking? Is there convincing evidence that sugar is bad for us and should we all be thinking about substantially reducing our sugar intake? In this book, Gary Taubes takes up the case against sugar. On the face of it, the human
body would seem well adapted to ingesting sugar since we have been living on foods containing sugars, such as fruits and vegetables, even before our ancient ancestors became bipedal. The problem addressed here, however, involves not so much the relatively small amounts of sugars that occur naturally in foodstuffs but rather the excessive amounts of manufactured, refined sugars we now consume. Although sugars come in many varieties, the author focuses his investigation primarily on sucrose, although he also includes high- fructose corn syrup, which has been manufactured since the 1980s and typically contains 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Around the beginning of the 20th
century, it became unmistakably evident that some highly significant changes were taking place in the health of the Western populations. Rather alarmingly, mortality statistics were revealing what appeared to be an epidemic of those dying from diabetes, with the growth curve in the number of cases rising exponentially. By 1978, Kelly West, a leading US diabetes epidemiologist, claimed that diabetes had killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars until then together. Armies of researchers sought
diligently to identify the cause of this upswing in mortality and reached a variety of differing conclusions. Some suggested that the increasing amount of fat in our diet was responsible, a
view that was seized upon by the sugar industry to maintain its profits from the sale of sugar. Others were convinced that sedentary life styles, gluttony and concomitant obesity were the explanation, an argument that seemed to make sense because diabetes and obesity are closely interrelated. After downplaying the role of
sugars in our diet for many years, however, many researchers are concluding that the principal culprit is in fact the increasing amount of sugar we consume. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that in any type of community undergoing Westernisation a spectrum of chronic diseases soon begins to emerge. The order in which these diseases appear is always more or less the same: initially tooth decay and periodontal disease, followed by gout, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and eventually a pattern of pathogenesis that embraces all of them. While gout might be explained by the consumption of too much meat and hypertension by the ingestion of too much salt, it now seems probable that the remaining cluster of maladies can all be accounted for by the marked increase in our sugar intake. Before these maladies take hold,
a key precursor state known as the metabolic syndrome appears, a condition characterised by increased weight, elevated blood pressure and glucose intolerance. If the chronic lifestyle diseases
associated with Western diets that follow are caused by the sugars that we currently over-consume, it is also quite possible that all the other more serious complications that follow the appearance of the metabolic syndrome can be ascribed to the same causative agent. What has now become clear, however, is that sugar can exert its toxic effects only if consumed to excess. Additionally, Taubes reminds us that a causal relationship between an excessive intake of sugar and the various diseases cited here has not yet been unequivocally established. Unfortunately, what constitutes an
excess may vary from one generation to the next as individuals begin to adapt to high dietary sugar levels. Nevertheless, medical authorities offer guidelines on the amount of sugar that we should not exceed in a healthy diet. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends no more than 20kg/yr, which is roughly two-thirds of the current American per capita consumption of 32kg, whereas Public Health England maintains that only 11kg/yr should be our target. These goals stand in stark contrast to the annual consumption in England during the 18th century, which rose from 2kg at the start to 8kg by the end of that century.
40 10 | 2017
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
