Since tooth decay was caused by refined grains and perhaps sugar most of all, Cleave argued, didn’t that imply that the same would be true of all these Western diseases? “It would be an extraordinary coincidence,” he wrote, “if these refined carbohydrates, which are known to wreak such havoc on the teeth, did not also have profound repercussions on other parts of the alimentary canal during their passage along it, and on other parts of the body after absorption from the canal.”
