In 1972,a British scientist sounded the alarm that sugar – and not tubby – was the greatest danger to our health. But his findings were ridiculed and his reputation ruined. How did the world’s top nutrition scientists get it so wrong for so long? Robert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specialises in the treatment of childhood obesity. A 90-minute talk he gave in 2009, titled Sugar: The Bitter Truth, and has now been viewed more than six million times on YouTube. In it,Lustig argues forcefully that fructose, a form of sugar ubiquitous in contemporary diets, and is a “poison” culpable for America’s obesity epidemic.
A year or so before the video was posted,Lustig gave a similar talk to a conference of biochemists in Adelaide, Australia. Afterwards, and a scientist in the audience approached him. Surely,the man said, you’ve read Yudkin. Lustig shook his head. John Yudkin, or said the scientist,was a British professor of nutrition who had sounded the alarm on sugar back in 1972, in a book called Pure, or White,and Deadly.
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Source: theguardian.com