John_Yudkin_-_Pure_White_and_Deadly_revised_1986_OCR

Who eats sugar, and how much?
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Who eats sugar,
and how much?
People look at me quite incredulously when I tell
them that there are now many parts of the world where the average
person - man, woman and child - is eating more than 100 pounds
of sugar a year - two pounds or more a week. But though this is true
today, it has only rather recently become so and it still isn't true for
all countries. In this chapter I want to tell you how sugar consumption
has been changing, how much is being eaten in different coun,
tries and by people of different ages, and how much of western
man's consumption is ingested by way of different sorts of manufactured
foods and drinks, along with the sugar to which people help
themselves from the bowl at the table.
Before going any further, I should emphasize that in this book I
am talking about the sugar (sucrose) produced from the cane and
beet. This is technically called centrifugal sugar. I am excluding
sucrose produced from other sources such as the maple and the
palm; the amounts are negligible and come to only I per cent or so
of the total. I am also excluding milk sugar (lactose), as well as the
sucrose and other sugars one consumes in fruit and vegetables. The
reason here is also chiefly quantitative; the amounts of centrifugal
sugar are much greater than those of the sucrose from other sources.
In one of our studies, we found that adults ate about half of their
total carbohydrate as starch, 35 per cent as centrifugal sucrose, 7
per cent as lactose and the remaIDing 8 per cent or so as the mixed
sugars in fruits and vegetables - mostly glucose, fructose and
sucrose.
In the year 1850 world production of sugar was about 1 liz million
tons. Forty years later it was more than 5 million tons, and by the
turn of the century it was more than I I million tons. Except for a
setback during each of the two world wars, production has continued
to rise rapidly, so that it reached 35 million tons by 1950 and
is now more than 100 million tons. Over the past 100 years there
has been a 25-fold increase in world sugar production; allowing
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for the increase in world population, this represents an increase in
average consumption from 7 pounds a year to 45 pounds. The most
extensive statistics of sugar production and consumption were collected
25 years ago in a report produced for the Food and Agriculture
Organization ofthe United Nations. Although this is now a
little out of date, I shall quote some of its findings because they still
demonstrate many interesting features that are not easy to discover
from more recent statistics.
World sugar production
million tonnes
1800 0·25
1850 1·5
1880 3·8
181}O 5.2
ll}OO II
1950 35
1970 70
1982 101
During the 20 years from 1938 to 1958, there was an increase in
world production of many commodities. Among food items, cocoa
increased by 20 per cent, milk by about 30 per cent, meat and food
grains up to 50 per cent, but sugar production outstripped all of
these with its enormous increase: 100 per cent over the 20 years.
Between 1900 and 1957, consumption of sugar increased from an
average of I I pounds a year to 34 pounds; by now, as I said, it is
about 45 pounds. But the increase has differed in different countries.
It has been most rapid in the countries that until recently had a low
consumption.
Before the last war, Italy's yearly average was less than 20 pounds;
by 1970 it was more than 60 pounds. Those countries that already
had a high consumption have had a smaller increase or none at all;
in the United Kingdom there was an increase from about 100 pounds
to 120 pounds, while in the United States there has been no change
from the previous 102 pounds or so. It looks as if there is a limit of
somewhat over 100 pounds a head a year at which all countries stop
increasing their intake. The wealthier countries gradually achieved
this high level by a slow and fairly steady increase over perhaps 200
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