John_Yudkin_-_Pure_White_and_Deadly_revised_1986_OCR

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
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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
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