The End of Craving: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of Eating Well

by Mark Schatzker

Of all the B vitamins we drizzle into the food supply, the most worthy of scrutiny is the one connected to pellagra: our old friend niacin. As far back as 1949, scientists at the National Institutes of Health discovered that among the many different carbohydrates—glucose, dextrin, maltose, sucrose, fructose, and so forth—two, and only two, had an unusual relationship with niacin. For rats to gain weight while consuming these two carbohydrates, they required at least three times as much niacin as compared to other carbohydrates. If they didn’t get an extra-large dose of niacin, they would develop a deficiency. What were those two carbohydrates? Sucrose and fructose—the first we know as table sugar and the second is a component in high-fructose corn syrup. Put more simply, if you’re going to eat a lot of sugar and metabolize that sugar, you need to eat a lot of niacin, too.