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How much sugar is good for you? None. The Case Against Sugar was most import book I read
last year in October, which motivated me to make an attempt to remove refined sugar from my diet, as much as possible. Taubes makes the provocative contention that sugar, rather than fat, is the primary cause of obesity and a major culprit in a spectrum of chronic diseases. While it is now recognized that a drastic increase in the consumption of sugar and refined starches correlates to a dramatic rise of obesity in populations that adopt a Western diet, the author argues that nutritionists have yet to pinpoint its significance. He points out that obesity is a marker for the overconsumption of carbohydrates responsible for the onset of Type 2 diabetes. The problem, he writes, is not the number but the kind of calories consumed—nor is it necessarily a diet high in saturated fats. Taubes compares sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup to “toxins…that do their damage over years and decades, and perhaps even from generation to generation.” Furthermore, diabetics and obese people are “more likely to have fatty liver disease” as well as other degenerative diseases due to elevated carbohydrate intake.Taubes in this book lays on layer after layer of additional evidence in making his case against sugar. He concludes with a discussion of what is the safe amount of sugar to eat. He says the answer is similar to the answer for tobacco. There is no safe amount for everyone. It's also an indictment of how a scientific community can be paid off to support any outcome.
I re-read it in March 2018 to brush as I was looking for motivation and re-emphasis on the sugar less lifestyle I am attempting to create moving forward. It had been an eye-opening, and truly terrifying read. It's hard to grasp the huge impact of refined sugar on human evolution. The rate of occurrence of diabetes, heart disease, gout, and a host of other chronic conditions pretty much parallels the rate of increase of sugar consumption.
This book was informative, but I will admit it was also tedious to get through. Some of the research is not completely definitive. It is very much worth the read.
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