According to science journalist Gary Taubes, whose best-selling books include his latest, The Case Against Sugar, the sweet stuff is even worse for you than you may think. In fact, as he documents, sugar is linked not only to obesity and type 2 diabetes, it also plays a significant role in heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and even gout.
And the issue with sugar, he documents, is not that it contains “empty calories,” as so many health experts have insisted, but that sugar is uniquely damaging to the human body.
In the past half century, “there has been a tripling of the prevalence of obesity … and an unimaginable 655 percent increase in the percentage of Americans with diabetes,” he writes.
Yet for many years before the medical industry decided that fat in the diet was the real enemy, physicians counseled their overweight patients to avoid sweets and starches, in favor of meat (with the fat) and nonstarchy vegetables. Today, nutrition experts preach the virtues of “healthy fats,” but lower-carbohydrate regimens like the one Taubes advocates (somewhat like the Atkins and South Beach programs) still remain controversial for long-term health management.
Taubes, who also wrote the bestselling Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, recently spoke with the Inquirer about his work.
READ THE INTERVIEW HERE: Q and A: Gary Taubes’ ‘Case Against Sugar’ could change your diet forever
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