Pure white and deadly was how John Yudkin put it in 1972 (a British nutritionist and former Chair of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London).
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). 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.”
Those of you that have read my article last month which hopefully debunked the cholesterol-fat hypothesis – you may have been wondering, well, what causes obesity and heart disease – keep reading!
Our bodies are finely balanced internally with a system called homeostasis. Homeostasis maintains our body temperature, our hormone levels, our weight and a whole myriad of complex processes to keep our bodies functioning at their optimum. We are talking about sugar and therefore about obesity, which is the biggest contributor to deaths from things such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
What does sugar do in the body that causes problems?
Ingestion of sugar promotes insulin production as insulin is the hormone that controls blood sugar levels and it stores some spare glucose in the liver or the rest as fat. A rise in insulin causes a decrease in leptin. Leptin is the hormone that tells us when we are full so if the levels decrease, we eat more. In addition, sugar is addictive, so you eat more!!
It’s all about eating more. Before 1975 the annual profit for the food industry was 1%. Post 1975 the average yearly profit climbed to 5% despite the rate of growth of the population decreasing.
10 processed food companies control 90% of the world’s food!! You may wonder how processed food can be cheaper than real food – It is cheaper because of subsidies, so they are artificially cheaper. Research suggests that if food subsidies were removed the only foodstuffs to increase in price would be sugar and corn – which would be no bad thing!!
So, the food industry is producing more processed foods which generally contain an increase in sugar and a decrease in fibre.
In 1900 in the UK, we ate 50g of fibre per day by 2000 that was down to 12g a day (on average).
Why is fibre important, after all we don’t metabolise it?
It is still an essential nutrient. It is essential for the microbiome, the millions of bacteria that live in our gut and do all the food processing for us – they need fibre to survive. Without fibre the microbiome starts to feed on the epithelial layer on the inside of our gut wall – that destroys the tight junctions that are the barrier/gate to the bloodstream and if that continues the stuff that is in our gut that we should dispose of out of our rectums can get through the bowel wall and into the bloodstream causing inflammation.
So begins a chain of events, hepatic inflammation, hepatic insulin resistance, chronic metabolic disease, hyperinsulinemia, driving the energy into the fat cells = obesity.
If you have a constant increase in insulin, you are in a growth paradigm rather than a burning paradigm that has ramifications for all body systems including the brain leading to dementia, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, fatty liver disease…… and so on.
Sugar inhibits mitochondrial function (the powerhouse of the cells) and this inhibits growth, so big implications for children’s development. Cancer can use sugar to produce glucose for itself to grow.
Sugar is not a food, it’s a poison and gradually there has been a generalised sense from the public that sugar is harmful and should be restricted.
The popularity of low-carbohydrate diets began in the mid 90’s with Robert Atkins, a cardiologist – who like Yudkin suffered rejection and ridicule by his peers and the conservative press. This trend has continued in the 21st century in varied forms including ketogenic and palaeolithic diets. For the vegans amongst you, although of course at completely opposite ends of the spectrum from the ketogenic diet, which is usually meat based they have the same effect – they both decrease insulin.
So now sugar has emerged as the principal nutrient of global concern and has also broadened the nutritional concerns about sugar beyond obesity to all the diseases in the metabolic syndrome. More recently Dr Robert Lustig has written Metabolic and has said he was proud to be a Yudkin disciple and to contribute to resurrecting his work and his reputation, and to assist in the advancement of his legacy and public health message.
So, in summary we need to protect the liver and feed the gut. If we do not change the way we eat, we will continue to suffer chronic disease, bankrupt the NHS and threaten the planet.
