Sugar - Medicine to Malady

In 1972, British scientist John Yudkin wrote an expose called Pure, White, and Deadlyand it wasn’t about cocaine. The subtitle was How Sugar is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It. Ancel Keys, the famous physiologist, ridiculed his book and told us the problem was really dietary fat. He had been on the cover of Time Magazine in 1961 and one of his big accomplishments was to invent military K rations (K for Keys). Besides eating too much fat, Keys also told us that Americans eat too much of everything (about 3,000 calories at the time. In fact, there was a scandal in the 60s about the sugar industry paying researchers to point away from sugar toward fat.

Keys’s concerns about fat from meat, milk, butter, and ice cream, and particularly saturated fat, was published in 1970 but our obesity problem took off in 1980 as shown in the chart below.

The chart is from The Weight of the Nation, a film from the National Institute of Medicine and others shown on HBO. They also showed this chart:

It looks Keys got the first part right (too much food), but he was wrong on the second part (total fat) and, apparently, wrong about John Yudkin.

Let’s get back to Yudkin’s sugar story. We can thank the Indians (from India) for sugar as back in 1200 BC, ancestors from Buddha came from “the land of sugar, or Gur (like suGur), a name given to Bengal…and described sugar in a Sanskrit epic as ‘tables laid with sweet things, syrup, (and) canes to chew…’” Over time, sugar was called “Indian Salt'' and was believed to be medicine by Europeans. Englanders were using sugar as a treatment for fever, cough, pectoral ailments, chapped lips, stomach diseases, and more. “It was expensive and, in fact, was worth its weight in silver.” 

By 1572, because sugar was becoming cheap, it was eaten for food as well as treating the sick. It also was used for currency. Slaves were needed to produce sugar in the New World and one writer noted that sugar “changed the planet more than many centuries of history and conquests…and… So many tears were shed for sugar that by rights it ought to have lost its sweetness.”

***INTERMISSION***

(We pause for a moment while I have a Three Musketeers candy bar …mmmmmmmmmm)

In 1964, Mary Poppins didn’t claim that sugar was a medicine but it was definitely a medical assistant as she charmingly sang, “Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, in the most delightful way.” Five years later, the Archies crooned about sugar as a term of endearment singing, “Sugar, ah honey, honey / You are my candy girl and you got me wanting you.”

By around 2000 Americans finally started to believe Yudkin’s “white death” hypothesis and sugar was indicted as a hazard. Indirectly, Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich helped by snapping at an overweight woman, “Bite my a*s, Krispy Kreme.”

Too late, by then we were addicted. Two hundred years ago, Americans ate 2 pounds of sugar a year. Today, we consume an average of 152 pounds a year. In a day, we average over 500 calories of sweeteners. For young Americans (2-19 years old), the average daily intake is 17 teaspoons (about the amount in a bottle and half of Coke). Adding to our sweet addiction, in the 1970s high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) came along to help increase our consumption of sweeteners. Although many are convinced that the increase in sugar and sweetener consumption was the cause of increases in obesity, it’s not clear.

Certainly, as Keys noted, Americans are eating more food, as well as cheaper food. And, instead of eating fat, we are eating more sugar. Sugar and HFCS are found in soda’s, candy, flavored yogurt, breads, canned fruit, juices, ketchup, ice cream, frozen croissants, cereals, jams, crackers, applesauce, pizza’s, granola bars, peanut butter, some pastas, relish, flavored oatmeal, cold cuts, salad dressings, canned soup, canned tomatoes, cottage cheese, and pickles. Whew!

 Although sugar was considered okay by the National Academy of Sciences in their Diet and Health Report in the 1980s, it seems to be fairly certain that we are eating far too much to be good for us now, particularly as it has been related to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. One study found that for every 150 calories of added sugar, there is a 1.1% increase in type 2 diabetes. It has also been linked to heart disease, cancer and a number of other ailments.

Sugar’s not medicine; nor a medical helper; it shouldn’t be a term of endearment; and eating too much may be making us heavier and sicker; but no matter what, 152 pounds of it a year can’t be good for us. 

And really, “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” 

Eating a spoonful of sugar sounds disgusting.