The Case Against Sugar

by Gary Taubes

In fact, anywhere populations begin eating Western diets and living Western lifestyles—whenever and wherever they’re acculturated or urbanized, as West noted in 1978—diabetes epidemics follow.

These chronic diseases—the diseases that ultimately kill us in modern Western societies—tend to cluster together in both populations and individual patients. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and Alzheimer’s account for five of the top ten causes of death in the U.S. A conservative estimate is that they cost the medical system and our society, in lost work and productivity, one trillion dollars a year. Together they’re often referred to as diseases of Western lifestyles, or diseases of Westernization. This cluster has led cancer researchers to suggest that obesity is a cause of cancer. It has led some Alzheimer’s researchers to refer to Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes. All of these diseases have now been linked to a condition known as “insulin resistance,” a phenomenon we will examine in depth.

Sugar does induce the same responses in the region of the brain known as the “reward center”—technically, the nucleus accumbens—as do nicotine, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.

“To attribute obesity to ‘overeating,’ ” he wrote, “is as meaningful as to account for alcoholism by ascribing it to ‘overdrinking.’ ”