Gary Taubes in BMJ: What If Sugar is Worse Than Just Empty Calories?

The case against sugar just got stronger with a new essay published yesterday in the British Medical Journal by Gary Taubes:

BMJ: What if sugar is worse than just empty calories? An essay by Gary Taubes

The article explores the idea that sugar itself could be the real root cause of obesity and type-2 diabetes, not just the overconsumption of "empty calories".

What if [...] the problem is the sugar itself. If so, then the failure to curb the epidemics is because of the failure to curb sugar consumption to any significant extent. The hypothesis is that sugar has deleterious effects on the human body independent of its calorific content and that a distinct causal pathway links consumption to disease.

Main points

• Independent of its caloric content, sugar is metabolized in the body in a way that may specifically link its consumption to metabolic disease.
• The scientific evidence around the harmful effects of sugar aside from its calories is ambiguous.
• Given the scale of the obesity and diabetes epidemics, we may need strong recommendations to crack down on sugar consumption until better science provides more concrete answers.

Read the full article here:

BMJ: What if sugar is worse than just empty calories? An essay by Gary Taubes