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

Product Information

If, as seems increasingly likely, the nutritional advice on which we have relied for 40 years was profoundly flawed, this is not a mistake that can be laid at the door of corporate ogres. Nor can it be passed off as innocuous scientific error. What happened to John Yudkin belies that interpretation. It suggests instead that this is something the scientists did to themselves – and, consequently, to us. Unsurprisingly, sugar production is rising in parallel, not only through more cane and beet, but also because of increased production of high fructose corn syrup/“isoglucose”, made from other starchy crops, like maize and wheat. Indeed, for all the attention to new policies to control demand for sugar, agricultural and trade policies continue to stimulate its production. [38] Nonetheless, the reformulation programmes of governments and companies should, over the longer term, gradually reduce consumption. Stacey Solomon, husband Joe Swash and their kids transform into The Wizard of Oz characters as they pose for sweet family snaps on Halloween

In March this year, Teicholz was invited to participate in a panel discussion on nutrition science at the National Food Policy conference, in Washington DC, only to be promptly disinvited, after her fellow panelists made it clear that they would not share a platform with her. The organisers replaced her with the CEO of the Alliance for Potato Research and Education. A bemused McGovern asked Yudkin if he was really suggesting that a high fat intake was not a problem, and that cholesterol presented no danger. Great British Bake Off 2023: Sixth contestant to leave is announced after screwing up Technical challengeWhen I asked Lustig why he was the first researcher in years to focus on the dangers of sugar, he answered: “John Yudkin. They took him down so severely – so severely – that nobody wanted to attempt it on their own.” 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]”. Helen Flanagan's daughterMatilda, seven, hilariously lets slip her mum is dating again - one year after she split from ex Scott Sinclair Epidemiological evidence similarly pointed to excess sugar consumption as a contributory factor in the development of type 2 diabetes. As before, the evidence relied on a comparison between different countries in the incidence of type 2 diabetes and the consumption of sucrose, and also on within-country differences between sub-populations that consumed less or more sucrose. Moreover, in developed countries, the increase in sucrose consumption that had occurred over the past several decades appeared to run parallel to the increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Experiments with rats showed that the feeding of sucrose led to impaired glucose tolerance (results with human subjects were more equivocal). The author mentions several other conditions that he believed were caused by or exacerbated by the consumption of sucrose: dyspepsia (indigestion), dental caries, seborrhoeic dermatitis, changes in the refractive index of the eye, and various forms of cancer. With the exception of dental caries, none of these conditions showed as strong a link with sucrose consumption as CHD and type 2 diabetes did.

Yudkin's publications from the Department showed an unusual breadth of interests, including (in addition to biochemistry) further studies of adaptive enzymes, [18] [19] nutrition and public health, [20] diseases of affluence, [21] [22] food choice both in human beings [23] [24] and in experimental animals, [25] and historical aspects of the human diet. [26] [27] But his concern became increasingly focused on two topics: the treatment of overweight and the harmful effects of excessive sugar ( sucrose) consumption. The end result is that I am fit and healthy and I experience the full range of my feelings, rather than push them down with mood-altering substances. I enjoy my life enormously but I am not enormous. The 2015 edition of the US Dietary Guidelines (they are revised every five years) makes no reference to any of this new research, because the scientists who advised the committee – the most eminent and well-connected nutritionists in the country – neglected to include a discussion of it in their report. It is a gaping omission, inexplicable in scientific terms, but entirely explicable in terms of the politics of nutrition science. If you are seeking to protect your authority, why draw attention to evidence that seems to contradict the assertions on which that authority is founded? Allow a thread like that to be pulled, and a great unravelling might begin.

Fourteen years after the first publication of Pure, White and Deadly, Yudkin decided that the book was out of date in important respects, and in 1986 he published a new edition to incorporate more recent experimental results. The 1986 edition has many more references, and a much fuller index. In Chapter 12 of the new edition ( Can you prove it?) he wrote about several experiments with human subjects in which fat intake had been manipulated by the reduction of animal fat; the results had not supported the fat hypothesis. Chapter 14 ( Eat sugar and see what happens) described further experiments from Yudkin’s department at Queen Elizabeth College, both with experimental animals and with human volunteers fed on diets rich in sugar. Chapter 17 ( A host of diseases) introduced a new section on disease of the liver. Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen's daughter Sami Sheen, 19, wears Mandelstam, Joel; J. Yudkin (1952). "Studies in Biochemical Adaptation. The Effect of Variation in Dietary Protein upon the Hepatic Arginase of the Rat". Biochemical Journal. 51 (5): 681–686. doi: 10.1042/bj0510681. PMC 1197916. PMID 13018145. In many countries, governments and medical organisations began publishing dietary recommendations. Some included sugar among their concerns, but without specific reference to Pure, White and Deadly, or to Yudkin at all. Fat remained the principal issue. A review of 100 international nutrition reports up to 1991 [21] found that 70 included quantitative targets for fat and only 23 for sugar.

In 2009 Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist of the University of California, San Francisco, with a special interest in childhood obesity, made a video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. [8] Lustig and his colleagues had discovered, independently of Yudkin's work, that sugar has serious deleterious effects, particularly in the etiology of diabetes and obesity. In his video, Lustig referred to his re-discovery of and admiration for Yudkin's research. The popularity of the video, which has been viewed several million times, has contributed to a resurgence of interest in Yudkin's research. [11]Yudkin, John (1944). "Nutritional Status of Cambridge School-Children". British Medical Journal. ii (4362): 201–214. doi: 10.1136/bmj.2.4362.201. PMC 2286012. PMID 20785586. The American scientists say that sugar is a poison and that its sale should be as tightly regulated as nicotine and alcohol. Such hyperbole is not persuasive. They get publicity for going over the top but I doubt that they will have influence where it matters - in the shops and at the table. a b c d e Winkler, J. T. (19 January 2013). "Pure, White and Deadly by John Yudkin". BMJ. 346 (7891): 227–232. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e8612. JSTOR 3493913. S2CID 70715616. Using everyday language and a range of scientific evidence, Professor Yudkin explores the ins and out of sugar, from the different types - is brown sugar really better than white? - to how it is hidden inside our everyday foods and how it is damaging our health. Yudkin, John (1965). "Evolution, History and Nutrition: Their Bearing on Oral Disease and Other Diseases of Civilisation". Dental Practitioner. 16 (2): 60–64. PMID 5214376.

REVEALED: The 'super comfortable' power leggings from Sweaty Betty that gym goers can't get enough of Government plans and policies on sugar are also changing. Earlier, the consensus target for sugar consumption was 10% of calories. [21] In 2015, Yudkin's home country, the UK, set a goal of 5% of dietary energy, [28] and WHO made this a “conditional recommendation” for all countries. [29] Keys, A. (1971). "Sucrose in the diet and coronary heart disease". Atherosclerosis. 14 (2): 193–202. doi: 10.1016/0021-9150(71)90049-9. PMID 4940760. Jason Momoa is 'beyond happy' that his stepdaughter Zoe Kravitz is engaged to his 'best friend' Channing Tatum

The study’s biggest limitation was inherent to its method. Epidemiological research involves the collection of data on people’s behaviour and health, and a search for patterns. Originally developed to study infection, Keys and his successors adapted it to the study of chronic diseases, which, unlike most infections, take decades to develop, and are entangled with hundreds of dietary and lifestyle factors, effectively impossible to separate. Olivia Rodrigo is dating British actor Louis Partridge after meeting 'through mutual friends' and hitting it off after a number of nights out in London