John_Yudkin_-_Pure_White_and_Deadly_revised_1986_OCR

Pure, White and Deadly
deterioration that holds back what otherwise might have been a
slight but very real increase in life-span.
That sugar might affect growth, maturation and longevity is only
astonishing if one continues to believe that all dietary carbohydrates
have the same metabolic effect once they have been digested and
absorbed. It not only ceases to be astonishing but becomes highly
plausible when one remembers that sugar can induce sizeable alterations
in the level of potent hormones.
19
How does
sugar
produce
its effects?
One reason why many people are sceptical about
the suggestion that sugar is bad for health is precisely that the number
of illnesses in which I feel sugar plays a part is so large. When
my colleagues and I say that so many conditions can largely be
avoided or improved by avoiding sugar, it looks as if we have joined
the panacea-mongers.
Take apple cider vinegar, the food faddists say, or brewers' yeast
with yoghurt, or wheat germ oil, and you will stay young and healthy
for ever - well, nearly for ever. Avoid sugar, I say, and you are less
likely to become fat, run into nutritional deficiency, have a heart
attack, get diabetes or dental decay or a duodenal ulcer, and perhaps
you also reduce your chances Of getting gout, dermatitis and some
forms of cancer, and in general increase your life-span.
It is difficult, certainly, to imagine that the omission of one single
food can produce all these benefits, or that its inclusion in the diet
can be responsible, at least in part, for so many disparate diseases.
Yet I do not believe that my suggestion is in the least implausible.
As I have shown, sugar has a wide range of properties that make it
a popular constituent of foods and drinks; it is this versatility that
is responsible for its use in so many commodities, and contributes
towards today's high intake of sugar.
Because of these very varied properties, it becomes more plausible
to imagine that sugar can produce such a large number of varied
effects in the body. But research workers are not at all sure of the
mechanisms by which everyone of the effects can be brought about.
Much of what follows, therefore, is inevitably theoretical, but it