Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It

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The development of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution (from c.10,000 BCE) led to a large increase in the consumption of starch, to which humanity adapted well. By contrast, it is only since the early 19th century that greatly improved methods of cultivation of sugar cane and sugar beet, and improved technology of refining, led to sucrose becoming readily available and remarkably cheap. Yudkin refers to these developments as the separation of palatability from nutritional value. [14] As a result the quantity consumed has increased about 50-fold in the past 150 years, with sucrose increasingly used not only in the home and in cafés but also by the manufacturers of soft drinks and as a sweetening agent for many pre-prepared foods. The human species has not had time to adapt to this extremely rapid change. Three problems result. First, unlike glucose, which is metabolised throughout the body, the fructose produced from the breakdown of sucrose is metabolised almost exclusively in the liver, where much of it is converted to fat. Secondly, since it is not uncommon for people to take as much as 30% of their daily caloric intake as sucrose, this consumption crowds out more desirable foods and can sometimes lead to deficiencies of certain nutrients. Thirdly, since many people find sucrose appetising, it is often taken in excess of caloric requirements, thus leading to obesity. Helen Flanagan's daughterMatilda, seven, hilariously lets slip her mum is dating again - one year after she split from ex Scott Sinclair This represents a dramatic shift in priority. For at least the last three decades, the dietary arch-villain has been saturated fat. When Yudkin was conducting his research into the effects of sugar, in the 1960s, a new nutritional orthodoxy was in the process of asserting itself. Its central tenet was that a healthy diet is a low-fat diet. Yudkin led a diminishing band of dissenters who believed that sugar, not fat, was the more likely cause of maladies such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes. But by the time he wrote his book, the commanding heights of the field had been seized by proponents of the fat hypothesis. Yudkin found himself fighting a rearguard action, and he was defeated.

ed. (1966). Our Changing Fare: Two Hundred Years of British Food Habits. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Yudkin, John (1961–1962). "Nutrition in the Affluent Society". Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. 104: 579–86. PMID 14079869. One of the scientists who called for the retraction of Nina Teicholz’s BMJ article, who requested that our conversation be off the record, complained that the rise of social media has created a “problem of authority” for nutrition science. “Any voice, however mad, can gain ground,” he told me. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, in a 2008 analysis of all studies of the low-fat diet, found “no probable or convincing evidence” that a high level of dietary fat causes heart disease or cancer. Another landmark review, published in 2010, in the American Society for Nutrition, and authored by, among others, Ronald Krauss, a highly respected researcher and physician at the University of California, stated “there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD [coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease]”. The inclusion of these additional results is one reason why the new edition (published by Viking in 1986 and by Penguin in 1988) is substantially longer than its predecessor. In addition, the author rearranged and expanded a good deal of the material in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the 1972 edition, so that these three chapters (which largely concerned the chemistry of sucrose, methods for its production, and the difference between white and brown sugar) now became seven. In the last chapter, Yudkin gave many additional examples of the ways in which his research and the publication of his results had been impeded by the sugar industry and by organisations influenced by it.The law should be involved when people are incapable of making rational judgements for themselves and when their behaviour is a risk to others. Ancel Keys was brilliant, charismatic, and combative. A friendly colleague at the University of Minnesota described him as, “direct to the point of bluntness, critical to the point of skewering”; others were less charitable. He exuded conviction at a time when confidence was most welcome. The president, the physician and the scientist formed a reassuring chain of male authority, and the notion that fatty foods were unhealthy started to take hold with doctors, and the public. (Eisenhower himself cut saturated fats and cholesterol from his diet altogether, right up until his death, in 1969, from heart disease.) The Challenge star Nelson Thomas charged with DWI... months after being rescued from burning vehicle following car crash The scientists point out that obesity is now a bigger problem in the world than malnourishment. I don't believe that. Yudkin, John (12 May 1956). "Man's Choice of Food". The Lancet. 267 (6924): 645–649. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(56)90687-0. PMID 13320834.

The book and author suffered a barrage of criticism at the time, particularly from the sugar industry, processed-food manufacturers, and Ancel Keys, an American physiologist who argued in favour of restricting dietary fat, not sugar, and who sought to ridicule Yudkin's work. [2] In later years, Yudkin's observations came to be accepted. [note 1] [2] [4] [5] [6] A 2002 cover story about sugar by Gary Taubes in The New York Times Magazine, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?", attracted attention, [7] and the following year a World Health Organization report recommended that added sugars provide no more than 6–10% of total dietary intake. [8] In 2009 a lecture on the health effects of sugar by Robert Lustig, an American pediatric endocrinologist, went viral. [9] The subsequent interest led to the rediscovery of Yudkin's book and the rehabilitation of his reputation. [2] [10] PICTURED: Maya Jama and Stormzy seen having heated argument in an alleyway during trip to LA after rekindling romance - as she breaks her silence Pure, White and Deadly is a 1972 book by John Yudkin, a British nutritionist and former Chair of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London. [1] Published in New York, it was the first publication by a scientist to anticipate the adverse health effects, especially in relation to obesity and heart disease, of the public's increased sugar consumption. At the time of publication, Yudkin sat on the advisory panel of the British Department of Health's Committee on the Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA). [2] He stated his intention in writing the book in the last paragraph of the first chapter: "I hope that when you have read this book I shall have convinced you that sugar is really dangerous." [3] Travis Barker LEAKS name of the son he is expecting with wife Kourtney Kardashian... and reveals the due date too (it's sooner than you think)

His studies of the nutritional status of school children in Cambridge showed that supplementation of the diet with vitamins had little effect on their general health. [13] The studies also showed serendipitously that children from a poorer area of Cambridge were shorter and lighter, and had lower haemoglobin levels and a weaker grip, than those from a wealthier area. Moreover, children from three industrial towns in Scotland were, on average, inferior in the same four measurements to the average Cambridge child, and the children from the poorer families in the Scottish towns were inferior in these measurements to those from the wealthier families. [14] The Sensible Person's Guide to Weight Control. London: Smith-Gordon. ISBN 978-1854630438. OCLC 59832913. The developing case against sugar was also manifest in the 2003 version of WHO's "Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases", which recognised that there were good reasons for restricting sugar intakes to less than 10% of total calories, not just because of dental caries, but “on nutritional grounds alone”. These grounds specifically included obesity. [8] The subsequent controversy with the food industry over the global strategy to achieve this target was a turning point for some companies, who recognised that sugar and sweet products were now irremovably on the nutrition agenda.