John_Yudkin_-_Pure_White_and_Deadly_revised_1986_OCR

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Pure, White and Deadly the disease; as there had been a tremendous increase in smoking, it followed there must also have been an increase in the prevalence of heart disease. 'That only shows,' said Professor Frazer, 'that smoking too has nothing to do with the disease' - a view that would have been supported by very few other scientists or doctors. As we left the room after lunch, the Director-General was overheard to say, 'You can take it that Yudkin won't be getting any research grants from the BNF'; this prophecy was certainly fulfilled. The BNF doesn't want nutritionistsJrom QEC Throughout my time as Head of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, neither I nor any of my colleagues had any association with the BNF. I should point out here that my Department, instituted in 1953, was the first in any European university to be devoted to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching of nutrition, and was carrying out research that was probably at least as extensive as that of any other nutrition department in the country. In terms ofthe aims ofthe BNF, its most important committee must be its Science Committee. The chairmen of this committee have always been distinguished scientists; none has been a professional nutritionist but they have all had some contact, if sometimes rather remote, with the subject of nutrition. As I write, there have been five chairmen of this committee since the Foundation began; these have included the late Sir Charles Dodds, one of the outstanding biochemists of the time, and the late Sir Ernst Chain, \ who shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin with Florey and Fleming. Both Dodds and Chain approached me while Chairman and asked why I was not on the B NF Science Committee, or indeed on any of its other committees. When I said that I had not been invited, they asked if they might suggest that I should be appointed. To this I agreed, although I guessed what the reply would be. And so it proved. Both chairmen had been told in due course that there was no question of having me in any way associated with the B N F. What I had not guessed was that the member of the BNF Board from Tate & Lyle, which had remained one of the major sponsors of the Foundation, had said that if I were appointed he would resign from the Board, and would see that his firm - and others - withdrew their sponsorship. 176 Attack is the best defence ~fter it was founded.in 1953, the Nutrition Department of Queen ElIzabeth College rapIdly became a thriving centre of nutrition research, and was soon responsible for having trained several of the graduates doing nutrition research in other laboratories in this coun~ and abroad. We were clearly interested, therefore, when in 1970 It was announced that a joint committee of the Agricultural Research Council and the Medical Research Council (ARC -MR C Committee) was being set up to examine the current state of nutrition research in the UK, and what important problems most needed investigating. To our surprise, neither I nor any of my staff were appointed to the ARC-MRC committee. . Mter the report had been published I happened to be writing to the Chairman of the Committee, who was a long-standing friend. In the course of my letter I said that it would interest me to know why no one from my department had been invited to join his committee in view of our position as an important nutrition research centre~ He replied that, since he himself was not a nutritionist he had taken advice from people in the field. He had consulted the British Nutrition Foundation, and it was they who had told him that I was not an appropriate person to be on .the Nutrition Research Committee. The long arm of the sugar industry You may well consider that my experiences with th~ British Nutrition Foundation reflect a rather remote and perhaps ummportant sort of intervention of sugar interests in the affairs of academic workers carrying out research and disseminating its results. Let me then mention two rather more direct interventions. Those of you who have been to Switzerland will no doubt have seen one of the many elegant branches of the supermarket chain Migros, or will have bought petrol in one of the Migros garages. During his lifetime the founder of this large organization, Gottlieb Duttweiler, set up a trust whose income is a percentage of the turnover ~f the business. Among many other activities, it organizes occaSIOnal symposia on subjects of international concern, such as ecology and nuclear energy. In 1977 the Gottlieb-Duttweiler Institute appointed AI Imfeld to organize these symposia, beginning with one that was to consider the subject of sugar - its production and distribution, its political and economic background and activities, 177
Pure, White and Deadry and its role in human nutrition. Al Imfeld asked me to be one of the speakers at this symposium and invited me to read a paper on the nutritional role of sugar. Soon after I had sent him my proposed paper, and a month or two before the meeting was due to take place, Imfeld wrote to say that the meeting had been cancelled and that he had been dismissed from his job; he added that he knew that I would understand the reasons for these events. The Gottlieb-Duttweiler Institute did hold a meeting on sugar in 1981, although this time I did not receive an invitation to attend. It was a somewhat bowdlerized meeting in that none of the speakers dealt with the international financial and political activities of the sugar companies, as had been intended at the meeting planned originally by Imfeld. Nevertheless, it was interesting to read in the report of the meeting what was said by Eugenie Hollinger, the representative for consumer affairs of the Migros organization: 'I well remember the appearance of the German translation of John Yudkin's sugar report, SUss aber gefiihrlich (Pure, White and Deadry) in 1974. I had the greatest difficulty at that time in persuading any newspaper publisher that the book should be reviewed. They were all afraid of an advertising boycott by the affected food industry and distributors. ' . Subsequently Imfeld published a book with the simple title Zucker, which strongly indicts the world-wide activities of the sugar industry and explicitly points 'out the role it played in bringing about the abandonment of the Institute's original meeting and the loss of hilil job. My second example occurred three or four years later. A new artificial sweetener, aspartame, was about to be given government approval in the UK, USA and several other countries. Aspartame is produced by the American pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle, which has a large operation in England. I was approached by the English company to organize a conference dealing generally with carbohydrates in nutrition, although there would be in addition one speaker from Searle who would give a paper about the new and still little-known aspartame. I spent a great deal of time corresponding with possible speakers, from the UK and from other countries, and discussing the particular areas that they would be asked to cover. Bookings were made for the travel and accommodation of the participants, as well as arrangements for the conference itself at a la~ge hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon. Two weeks or so before the meetmg was to take place, it was cancelled. At this late stage I was left with 178 Attack is the best defence the unpleasant task of informing the speakers with whom I had been carrying on prolonged and detailed correspondence, and who by now had prepared the papers they had intended to give at the conference. More difficult still, I had to try as tactfully as I could to avoid telling them what I understood to be the real reason for the cancellation. The person from Searle who for months had been making the manifold technical arrangements for the conference told me the news about the cancellation; he was understandably very upset and angry. It was therefore not surprising that he could not restrain himself sufficiently to maintain the secrecy that the company presumably intended concerning the reason for the abandonment of the conference. According to him, it was the Coca-Cola Company that had pressed Searle to cancel the meeting. Coca-Cola are the world's largest single users of sugar. In 1977, I am told, they used one Inillion tons of sugar in the USA, so they had a considerable interest in what the public were told about sugar. Meanwhile they were also producing Diet-Cola for people wanting low-calorie soft drinks; although making up only a small proportion of total softdrink consumption, this was nevertheless a large and thriving market. Thus, in the early 1980s, Coca-Cola was negotiating with Searle about using aspartame in these drinks instead of only saccharin - an enormous potential market for the new sweetener. This fact gave Coca-Cola the opportunity to suggest that their decision could depend on whether Searle proceeded with the conference, which would undoubtedly have publicized new research on the ill-effects produced by the consumption of sugar. And Searle abandoned the conference. Telling the truth about tooth decay The most impressive campaign to inform people of the ill-effects of sugar consumption was, I believe, the one begun in 1977 by the North-Rhine Dental Insurance Association (the Kassen-Zahnartzlichen Vereinigung Nordrhein, or KZV). This was done mostly through the enthusiastic and energetic activities of its chairman, Dr Edvard Knellecken. With more than £1 million a year that they put aside for anti-sugar propaganda, KZV advertised in newspapers and magazines, wrote letters to doctors, scientists and politicians, and campaigned for a range of legislative measures to 179
Page 1 and 2:
WHY DO PEOPLE EAT SO MUCH SUGAR? WH
Page 3 and 4:
Also by John Yudkin THIS SLIMMING B
Page 5 and 6:
Acknowledgements Introduction Much
Page 7 and 8:
Pure, White and Deadly enormous amo
Page 9 and 10:
Pure, White and Deadly protein food
Page 11 and 12:
Pure, White and Deadly vation of ce
Page 13 and 14:
Pure, White and Deadly nutritional
Page 15 and 16:
-----------------------------------
Page 17 and 18:
-----------------------------------
Page 19 and 20:
Pure, White and Deadly 909 pups bor
Page 21 and 22:
Pure, White and Deadly genetic chan
Page 23 and 24:
Pure, White and Deadly sically harm
Page 25 and 26:
Pure, White and Deadly years; some
Page 27 and 28:
,Pure, White and Dead~ cuits betwee
Page 29 and 30:
Pure, White and Deadly inducted int
Page 31 and 32:
Pure, White and Deadly and particul
Page 33 and 34:
Pure, White and Deadly absolutely p
Page 35 and 36:
Pure, White and Deadly out to be. S
Page 37 and 38:
Pure, White and DeadbJ diet that te
Page 39 and 40:
Pure, White and Deadly More recent
Page 41 and 42:
Pure, White and Deadly the change i
Page 43 and 44: Pure, White and Deadly about nutrit
Page 45 and 46: Pure, White and Deadly polyunsatura
Page 47 and 48: Pure, White and Deadly have your he
Page 49 and 50: Pure, White and Deadly to by Keys,
Page 51 and 52: Pure, White and Deadly any country,
Page 53 and 54: Eat sugar and see what happens 14 E
Page 55 and 56: Pure, White and Deadly the walls of
Page 57 and 58: Pure, White and Deadly in fasting b
Page 59 and 60: Pure, White and Deadly is reason to
Page 61 and 62: Pure, White and Deadly this point i
Page 63 and 64: Pure, White and Deadly causes both
Page 65 and 66: - - -------------- A pain in the mi
Page 67 and 68: Pure, White and Deadly made the gas
Page 69 and 70: 17 A host of diseases I now want to
Page 71 and 72: Pure, White and Deadly Number of de
Page 73 and 74: Pure, White and Deadly therefore be
Page 75 and 76: Pure, White and Deadly would be o.
Page 77 and 78: 18 Does sugar accelerate the life p
Page 79 and 80: Pure, White and Deadly nearly 2 inc
Page 81 and 82: Pure, White and Deadly will, I hope
Page 83 and 84: Pure, White and Deadly because peop
Page 85 and 86: Pure, White and Deadly some way cau
Page 87 and 88: Pure, White and Deadly implies that
Page 89 and 90: Attack is the best defence 21 Attac
Page 91 and 92: Pure, White and Deadly not agree. w
Page 93: Pure, White and Deadly The British
Page 97 and 98: Pure, White and Deadly that the Ins
Page 99 and 100: Pure, White and Deadly that sugar i
Page 101 and 102: Pure, White and Deadly Chapter 6 Br
Page 103 and 104: Pure, White and Deadly Skin disease
Page 105 and 106: Index Index jaggery, 19 Kassen-Zahn
show all

John_Yudkin_-_Pure_White_and_Deadly_revised_1986_OCR

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?