The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes

The Case Against Sugar Reviews

• 
  Elyse Walters

  I still remember when the book “Sugar Blues”, by William Dufty hit the scene in the mid-80’s. ....and Dr. Atkins diet was a revolution....
  There were books out in the 70’s that were already screaming “sugar is addictive”....
  and learn the “real truth about sugar”.
  I studied Kinesiology and nutrition at UC Berkeley. I ‘knew’ about trans fat and the value of Omega 3’s .... years before most people knew the word. When I put my flax seeds into a grinder to sprinkle them on my salads or other foods just before eating - in the 1970’s, people called me a hippie. I was far from one.
  Today....its not odd, but collectively if we live in the West....surrounded by temptations of The American ways of eating ....socially - emotionally - and spiritually- we each can benefit to check in within ourselves from time to time.....and ask ourselves.....”how are we doing with our eating”?
  
  Our need for education and improvements are endless. Ever notice how each one of us are on own eating path today. Eating in our society is a complicated issue. BUT *sugar* .....the empty calorie ....( no matter how much we like it - which I admit has been my #1 drug of choice my entire life -the drug I’ve had emotional and PHYSICAL battles with) ....is AS ADDICTING- more so - for some people - than cocaine- alcohol- or any other drug on the market. People who know they are
  sugar addicted - seriously addicted - know who they are. Many can’t eat a drop of the white sugar crystals without real fear of setting themselves up for cravings sooo strong for more....it’s all they can think about. MEAT - and VEGETABLES never cause THAT type of neurotic thinking. SUGAR can do that!
  
  There are also MANY GREAT BOOKS on the market which support - educate - and guide people to make healthy choices:
  So, if it’s support for healthy eating - cook books or guide books - I can share a few that I believe are excellent...
  BUT THIS BOOK... “The Case Against Sugar”.....probably the best book of its kind ... is The MOST researched. (its not a recipe book), Instead it is ....THE MOST historical book today that we have on the subject of sugar - scientifically proven - real evidence -that SUGAR is THE MAJOR NUMBER ONE DANGEROUS FOOD contributing to a wide range of diseases.
  
  Here are just a ‘few’ of those OTHER BOOKS that I own and highly endorse.( remember I studied nutrition and was certified as a nutritional consultant many years ago) - so my library is large.
  A few of my favorite books: “Clean Eating” by Alejandro Junger,MD, “The Total Health Cookbook” by Joseph Mercola, MD, The Blood Sugar Solution”, by Mark Hyman MD, Joseph Mercola “The No-Grain” diet,
  “The 21 Day Sugar Detox” is NOT my favorite because I don’t think people know how to use it right. —-ANYTHING that says 21 days ... can be a set up for a failure.
  But the recipes are fine. I personally - in general - don’t like that old American way of thinking ‘quick fix’.... The title alone feeds into account‘diet’ way of thinking. But with awareness. .... the book ‘might’ work for some people. Often - it’s a set up for the brain to want to be rewarded in 21 Days —- but then that same brain will punish oneself six months later. —- Personally I’m just careful with anything that ‘looks’ or sounds like a diet.
  Other books I own and like are by: Gary Null’s MD, Pam PeekeMD , Gabriel Cousens MD, GARY TAUBES.
  
  MOVING ONTO THIS BOOK....
  There are some already excellent reviews. Cliff, your review is outstanding! Thank you!
  Gary Taubs is highly respected — his work is well researched. He has done a great service in explaining how SUGAR - TABLE SUGAR and high fructose corn syrup in particular have been a major contributor to a host of illnesses in Western society. This book covers the history - OF THE SUGAR INDUSTRY —including its ties to big businesses- our government-and the tobacco industry.
  Anyone with type 2 diabetes or concerns about getting it .... might seriously read this book.
  
  The hardest thing to digest for me - in reading this book.....even though I believe there is a need for a complete change in thinking ---is completely changing the way we celebrate with our SWEET TREATS.....
  Perhaps one day .... we will no longer celebrate a child’s birthday with cake or ice cream. Perhaps we really don’t need to express our love to each other with a sweetie for our sweetie on Valentines. Maybe the Easter Bunny will deliver real eggs...and perhaps Santa Claus is fat enough and doesn’t need any more cookies.
  How do we collectively support healthy changes?
  Little steps at a time .....
  
  “THE CASE AGAINST SUGAR”..... could be a terrific non-fiction book club pick so that communication can take place about an issue that affects all us. SUGAR is THAT powerful in our every day lives.....but it’s not an innocent bystander.
• 
  Michelle Burton

  Gary Taubes has done an excellent job in explaining why sugar is so terrible for the body. I am seeing a nutritionist to help me with my weight and on my last visit she stated to me that you can eat any food in moderation. My response to her was, "What does moderation mean? I guess a person could smoke crack in moderation but no one recommends that." Taubes stated it clearly in his book that the people who say "eat in moderation" typically don't have a weight problem, (and my nutritionist does not) therefore what moderation looks like to one person would look totally different to another. For me, I am staying away from as much sugar as possible. It is in so much foods I don't know if I can totally abstain from it, but I can stop eating the main culprit of sugar delivery systems: candies, cookies, cakes, pop, fruit juices. Y'all, the stuff is deadly and toxic. My father lost a foot to diabetes and another family member kidneys recently failed due to diabetes and high blood pressure. Just like his book Good Calories, Bad Calories convinced me not to eat so much refine carbohydrates, The Case Against Sugar has convinced me to go cold turkey with sugar. Highly recommend all three of his books on nutrition if you want to be in the best health possible.
• 
  Clif Hostetler

  This book delves into Western civilization's history with sugar and its increasing rate of consumption since introduction of refined sugar into the Western diet. With this increased consumption also came the economic power of the sugar industry that throughout most of the twentieth century was the funder of nutritional research that tended to focus of causes for
  Western diseases in directions other that sugar itself.
  
  The rate of occurrence of diabetes, heart disease, gout, and a host of other chronic conditions pretty much parallels the rate of increase of sugar consumption. Throughout the twentieth century researchers seemed to want to blame saturated fats and cholesterol but had difficultly establishing links through subsequent health studies. Reluctance to distinguish between complex carbohydrates and simple sugar carbohydrate and refusing to accept the possibility of different metabolism routes for sucrose, fructose and other sugars made nutritional researchers blind to the possible role of sugar.
  
  In the manner of a good prosecuting attorney, Taubes in this book lays on layer after layer of additional evidence in making his case against sugar. This data is gleaned from medical history and multiple population studies of the relationship between the consumption of sugar with diabetes and then with all the other medical problems associated with diabetes. Today the American rate of diabetes is nearly one in ten adults, and approximately one in ten children are estimated to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease which is a precursor of diabetes.
  
  I found particularly alarming the concept of "
  perinatal metabolic programming" (a.k.a. metabolic imprinting) as a hypothetical means by which succeeding generations may be more likely to develop diabetes, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome than is true for today's population.

  The conditions in the womb—in the intrauterine environment—influence the development of the fetus, so that subtly different conditions will lead, in effect to the birth of newborns who respond differently to the environment they face outside the womb. In particular, the nutrients that the developing child receives in the womb—including the supply of glucose—pass across the placenta in proportion to the nutrient concentration in the mother's circulation. The higher the mother's blood sugar, the greater the supply of glucose to the fetus. The developing pancreas responds by overproducing insulin-secreting cells. "The baby is not diabetic," says Roy Metzger, who studies diabetes and pregnancy at Northwestern University, "but the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas are stimulated to function and grow in size and number by the environment they're in. So they start over-functioning. That in turn leads to a baby laying down more fat, which is why the baby of diabetic mother is typified by being a fat baby."

  I interpreted the above as probably leading to increased sensitivity to the detrimental effects of sugar. However, Taubes elsewhere says it may increase or decrease sensitivity, he's not sure which.
  
  I thought once Taubes had established the link between sugar and diabetes that he would be finished. But he proceeds to link heart disease to diabetes through the indirect link of
  insulin resistance and
  metabolic syndrome that leads to hypertension. He didn't stop there. He then proceeded to name sugar as the culprit in ALL
  Western diseases.

  ... if sugar causes insulin resistance and elevates triglycerides and makes us fat, then it very likely causes hypertension, too—if not directly, then at least indirectly, through its effect on insulin resistance and weight. Sugar is the culprit.
  
  So here's the if/then hypothesis: If these Western diseases are associated with obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome, which many of them are, then whatever causes insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome is likely to be the necessary dietary trigger for the diseases, or at least a key player in the causal pathway. Because there is significant reason to believe that sugars—sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup in particular, the nearly fifty-fifty combinations of glucose and fructose—are the dietary trigger of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, it's quite likely they are a primary cause of all these Western diseases, including ... cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Without these sugars in the diet, these chronic diseases would be relatively rare, if not, in some cases, virtually nonexistent.

  At this point Taubes proceeds to address the major Western diseases, one by one, to discuss the likelihood that sugar is responsible, or at least largely responsible. He proceeds to go into a detailed discussion of the hypothetical biochemical mechanisms by which ingestion of sugar can be linked to gout, hypertension, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Taubes doesn't claim definitive proof according to the rules of science, and indeed it may never be possible to establish absolute proof. But Taubes has certainly laid out a string of circumstantial evidence and mechanisms by which simple sugars can lead to the Western diseases that I find compelling.
  
  Taube concludes with a discussion of what is the safe amount of sugar to eat. He says the answer is similar to the answer for tobacco. There is no safe amount for everyone. There are some population studies that have shown that when primitive cultures begin to eat the Western diet that problems begin to appear at about seventy pounds per capita per year of sugar consumption with a twenty year delay in the appearance of symptoms. The FDA in 1986 said forty-two pounds per capita per year was safe. (Current average per capita sugar consumption in USA is over 100 lb/year less losses from discarded food.) But that is a generalized amount for the total population and doesn't account for some individuals who may be maladapted to sugar. Furthermore, future populations may be more (or less) sensitive to sugar than in the past because of perinatal metabolic programming.
  
  Here's a link to an article about sugar addiction and withdrawal:
  
  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/0...
  
  Here's a link to an NPR article titled, "What The Industry Knew About Sugar's Health Effects, But Didn't Tell Us."
  
  https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...
  
  Here's a link to a NYT article about research on the negative health effects of sugar. One study, from Emory University, found that regular consumption not only of drinks containing added sugars but also of naturally sweet fruit juice raised the risk of an early death by as much as 44 percent. "...risk for developing heart disease and kidney stones rose in direct proportion to the amount of high-fructose corn syrup they consumed."
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/we...
  
  The following is for my own possible future reference.
  Excerpt from The Story of the Human Body, by Daniel E. Lieberman. The quest to understand obesity:
  
  https://www.delanceyplace.com/view-ar...
• 
  Emily Crow

  Guess what? Sugar is not a healthy food. Who knew? In fact, according to Gary Taubes, it causes just about every "disease of Western civilization" and we probably shouldn't eat it at all, which kind of reminded me of all the other nutrition doomsday books I've read over the years:
  
  The China Study...don't eat meat or dairy, you will get sick and die
  Wheat Belly...don't eat wheat, you will get sick and die
  Eat More, Weigh Less...don't eat fat, you will get sick and die
  The Paleo Solution or any other paleo book...don't eat grains or beans, you will get sick and die
  Sugar Blues...oh wait, that was sugar again. Two strikes against sugar.
  
  So I guess I need to hole up in my nutrition bunker with nothing but vegetables and salad greens, and wait out the food apocalypse, because there's nothing left to eat! But, in all seriousness, I think any reasonable person can concede that sugar--at least in the ginormous amounts it is consumed in our society--is pretty much bad for us. As to just how bad, Gary Taubes is here to explain, and I found a lot that was interesting or valuable in this book. I've read about sugar and metabolic syndrome (potentially leading to type II diabetes, heart disease and other things) before, but Taubes described the process convincingly, and I ran across a couple of new things, like the potential link between high sugar consumption and gout. I also enjoyed the first few chapters about the history of the sugar industry.
  
  The second half of the book was not as satisfying for me, though. For one thing, Taubes returned to a couple of his key issues that I've always been a bit skeptical of, such as a complete dismissal of the "calories in/calories out" equation for weight loss. I get that it is not quite that simple--a lot of things can go wonky with the metabolism, and the types of foods eaten do make a difference--but at a certain level, yes, if you eat less and/or exercise more, you WILL lose weight, and we all know people who have done that. And then there's the Ancel Keys bashing.... I get it, Taubes thinks Keys was completely wrong with his Seven Countries Study and theory of saturated fat causing heart disease, but honestly, his rancor towards the man comes across like a personal grudge match at times. Especially since I actually do respect Keys' contributions and as far as I'm concerned, the saturated fat versus sugar issue hasn't been resolved yet. Regardless, the Mediterranean diet that Keys ended up espousing is NOT high in sugar and, as far as population studies goes, appears to be quite healthful.
  
  Now maybe you are thinking that population studies are of limited use and that Keys cherry-picked the Seven Countries Study to prove his point, and you would be right. Which leads me to my main issue with this book, and why I couldn't give it higher than a three star rating--in the last couple of chapters, Taubes shamelessly cherry-picks population studies to prove his extreme anti-sugar point, focusing on tribal peoples such as the Pima Indians and certain Pacific Islanders. Much closer to home (and much closer to the DNA mix of most of his audience, I'm guessing), I could point out other, conflicting populations, such as the Amish, who eat a lot of sugar (and refined flour) and don't have anywhere near the levels of heart disease and diabetes as the rest of us....
  
  Another missed opportunity is that, while Taubes discusses the economics and politics of sugar in the past (even the recent past), he doesn't address the political landscape that has created our current sugar glut. I've lived three places where sugar crops are a major part of the local economy: Hawaii (sugar cane), central Michigan (sugar beets) and currently central Illinois (corn, a.k.a. high fructose corn syrup). I am surrounded by field upon field upon field of mono-crops of genetically modified, pesticide-laden corn, much of it bound for factories to be turned into HFCS and then splattered on just about every processed food in the market at cut-rate prices, so that junk foods are cheaper than fresh vegetables. Because of government farm subsidies. And then the taxpayers are socked again at the end of the cycle, paying for all the health care. But if we all stopped eating this crap, I don't even want to imagine the economic repercussions. It's a messed up system, and it's entirely relevant to the issue of why so many North Americans are sick and obese, and it's barely addressed in this book.
  
  Finally, towards the end of the book, the speculation and scare-mongering about sugar reached an almost ridiculous level. Implying that allowing a child to have a single scoop of ice cream per week would be unhealthy? Wondering if we have messed up our health for generations to come by eating sugar? At this point, I just stopped taking the author seriously.
  
  But I will admit, at one point he states that the people who say sugar is OK in moderation are the people who don't have a problem with it, and I guess I just proved his point. Despite my many dietary vices, I don't have much of a sweet tooth, and can enjoy a bit of dark chocolate or a creme brulee once in a while. Sugar isn't addictive for me, and I actually find the sweetness of many processed foods kind of off putting. So I guess I would say, if you feel "hooked" on sugar, then definitely read this book. Otherwise, it has a few interesting points but ultimately seems a bit overwrought to me.
• 
  Kieran Seán Fitzpatrick

  main take-aways:
  
  - a calorie is not a calorie.
  - fats in food are not bad.
  - sugar causes: diabetes, gout, cancer, bad breath, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, MRSA, depression, economic inequality, republicans, nazis, trump, and alzheimer's.
  - the sugar industry uses tactics similar to climate-change-deniers.
  - it is almost impossible to not eat sugar.
  - there is as much sense in eating a "moderate amount" of sugar as there is in smoking a "moderate amount" of cigarettes.
  
  it's not like any of these conclusions are hard to come by.
  the problem is that it takes so much effort _not_ to consume sugar.
• 
  Bam cooks the books ;-)

  Having been on a zero-sugar diet for the past three weeks and planning to make it a lifestyle change (see my review of
  Zero Sugar Diet: The 14-Day Plan to Flatten Your Belly, Crush Cravings, and Help Keep You Lean for Life), I wanted to read a bit more about the science behind the claim that the added sugars in processed foods could possibly be the cause of the current obesity and diabetes epidemic. Intuition, common sense and observation tells one it is true but so many diet fads have come and gone, that a little healthy skepticism is warranted.
  
  This book does not provide proof but does give more food for thought (pun intended.) There are very few studies to back up any of this as the big clinical trial money has been focused on shoring up the theory that dietary fat is the main culprit so a leap of faith is still required, I'm afraid, but I have to feel we're on the right track with wholesome, more natural food. Sometimes the simple answer IS the correct one.
  
  "Diet advice that recommends we eat whole foods and avoid processed foods (foodlike substances) remove virtually all refined sugar by definition; diet advice to avoid sugar means, by definition, that we avoid virtually all processed foods."
• 
  JDK1962

  I happened to be reading this at the same time as I was listening to a three-part Freakonomics podcast series called "Bad Medicine," and they both hit on the same problem: the emphasis upon "eminence-based" medicine, rather than evidence-based medicine, i.e., if a renowned practitioner is behind a hypothesis, that can be enough to direct, or at least influence, decades of research and practice.
  
  This is especially critical in the science of sugar, because Taubes' point is that the damage done by sugar is not something that can be easily researched. The damage--if it is indeed caused by sugar--takes not days or weeks but decades to manifest, and it would require literally billions of dollars of research to establish a firm scientific link. But the case that Taubes presents is pretty alarming, especially showing that, as aboriginal peoples are introduced to the "Western diet," a host of "Western diseases" start showing up.
  
  Taubes' book does a good job of laying out the case, but perhaps falls short in a prescriptive sense. Eat less or no sugar is about the long and short of it. And of course, take the medical advice of those being funded by the sugar industry very, very skeptically.
  
  FYI, as someone who works in finance, I thought the quote from C.W. Barron, about investing in vices, was quite interesting, so I actually set up an index focusing on gambling, alcohol, tobacco, and carbonated beverage producers (setting up and testing indices is what I do for a living). In the period from 1999-2016, the annualized return was approximately 3X greater than the S&P500 over the same period, with lower standard deviation and drawdown, and higher Sharpe ratio and dividend yield. So, Barron was on to something...though I'd personally be pretty queasy about investing in such an index.
• 
  Ita

  ‘Medicine is mostly taught untethered from its history,’ asserts Gary Taubes at the beginning of this book. ‘Students are taught what to believe, but not always the evidence on which their beliefs are based.’
  This book is a much needed history of sugar. I can think of nowhere else where failure to look at the evidence on which medical beliefs are based has had, and continues to have, such tragic consequences.
  
  The leading authority who dominated the teaching about diabetes during the twentieth and into the twenty-first century was a dedicated doctor called Elliott Joslin. His textbook, ‘The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus was first published in 1916. Revered as a bible, its most recent edition appeared in 2005, forty-three years after his death. Joslin argued that fats, and not sugar, were the cause of diabetes. This belief was supported by Harold Himsworth, a very influential diabetes researcher based in London, who in 1931 proposed that a diet rich in carbohydrate should be recommended to diabetics. Both Joslin and Himsworth pointed to Japan as a country where the diet was rich in carbohydrate and low in fat, and where there was very little diabetes. What both men ignored was that sugar consumption in Japan at that time was comparable to that in England and America in the nineteenth century, when diabetes was very rare. They both assumed that sugar and other carbohydrates were equivalent in their effects on the human body.
  
  Sugar (sucrose) is formed in plants by the condensation of two simpler sugars – glucose and fructose. Glucose, the molecule into which starches are digested, is used to provide energy. Any surplus is converted, in the liver and muscles, to glycogen (‘animal starch’) for storage until needed. Conversion of glucose to glycogen is under the control of the hormone insulin. Fructose, by contrast, is converted by the liver into fat. Its fat-forming effects seem to be enhanced when glucose is present.
  
  Joslin’s and Himsworth’s misconception might have been challenged by the research on metabolism, endocrinology, genetics and nutrition which was taking place in Germany and Austria before the Second World War. Post 1939 this very valuable work was lost to the scientific community. Nutritionists in the English-speaking world focussed on energy balance. A calorie was a calorie no matter where it came from. Putting on weight was simply a matter of consuming more calories than could be expended. Excess weight caused both diabetes and obesity. Diet and exercise were the solutions.
  
  When the technique of radioimmunoassay was developed in the 1960s, it brought with it the possibility of measuring hormone levels, and the problem of insulin resistance came to light. Unexpectedly, high insulin levels could accompany high levels of sugar in the blood. Insulin was no longer effective in moving glucose out of the blood and into cells. This pattern was found in people suffering from obesity, and in those who developed diabetes later in life. What caused insulin resistance was then a mystery. It has since been linked to sugar consumption.
  
  By the 1950s it was recognised that heart disease was associated with both diabetes and obesity. Whether too much fat or too much sugar caused heart disease was still an open question, and researchers were highly motivated to find an answer. The hypothesis that fat was the murder weapon was supported by the very wealthy and powerful Sugar Association with its Food and Nutrition Advisory Committee. The American Heart Association also came down on the side of fat. It advocated low fat diets for every American, while its researchers were admitting that the dietary fat/heart disease hypothesis needed much more investigation. Those who favoured the sugar hypothesis like John Yudkin in England faced ridicule and the charge of being quacks. In the 1960s Yudkin fed human subjects sugar-rich diets and reported that this increased their cholesterol and triglyceride levels. It seemed to ratchet up their insulin levels and even make their blood platelets sticky.
  Clinical trials were set up in the US and in Europe to test the fat, but not the sugar hypothesis. To date they have failed to show that high levels of dietary fat cause heart disease, obesity or diabetes. Nevertheless, in 1986 the American government and health organisations committed themselves to getting Americans to eat a low fat diet. Everyone else followed suit. The epidemic of diseases included in metabolic syndrome has only worsened.
  
  Gary Taubes cannot prove that sugar is the cause of Western chronic diseases, but the evidence he gives is overwhelming. I have concentrated on some of the scientific aspects, but this book contains much more. It is also as riveting as a good novel. Taubes’ clarity of vision is very rare, and a book like this is worth its weight in gold.
• 
  Lubinka Dimitrova

  Amazingly eye-opening, and truly terrifying. It's hard to grasp the huge impact of refined sugar on human evolution, and - once again - thanks to greedy lobbies, we happily march towards our doom, so that the sugar industry barons may continue to enjoy the profits of providing us with our drug of choice. It's unbelievable that governments try to regulate recreational drugs, at the same time when one of the most toxic inventions of humanity is virtually promoted as a healthy alternative to the "oh-so-dangerous" fat. I know that all this sounds like a huge overstatement, and I wish it was, but sadly the evidence is here, and choosing not to see it does not make it less valid. Read the book, and weep. But don't eat candy to alleviate the pain (ice cream is kind of OK though - huh?!)
  
  Oh, hell, I need to stop reading books on nutritional subjects... I might as well lay down and wait to die on my own - I'm not sure that it'd be much more painful this way...
• 
  Peter Karlin

  You will require sugar to stay awake during this book. I've read far more interesting articles on the subject.
• 
  Bharath

  The title says it all – sugar is not good for us.
  
  While that is evident from the title, the book has a great deal of detail and history to back up this claim. Diabetes is rising all over the world. In most countries, the disease is multiplying so rapidly that a significant portion of the population either already has diabetes or is at great risk.
  Why then is the medical community and governments not really alarmed. As it turns out, research especially in the past has been significantly corrupted with sugar industry sponsored research and also conflicting viewpoints. The evidence which the author quite painstakingly assembles does indicate that sugar is to blame for a number of ailments of modern times including heart ailments, and possibly even cancer. While, most seem to consider fat as the main culprit, in combination with other lifestyle issues such as inadequate exercise, quite possibly sugar has a far greater detrimental impact.
  
  I liked the way the case against sugar is built up – with a lot of history, research and statistics. And yet, matter tends to repeat and the book could be been far more crisp for the matter it contains. Some notes on the sugar from natural foods such as fruits could have been discussed.
  
  An important book to read nevertheless – definitely recommended.
  
• 
  Holly

  Informative general history. Taubes is a good explainer even if I still wonder about his tendency to zoom in on a particular diet "vice" - it was fat and now it's sugar. (His Why We Get Fat was over-simplified almost to the point of inaccuracy, but it turns out to have been a sloppy distillation of his Good Fats, Bad Fats.)
  
  This new book doesn't offer self-help advice, but serves several other purposes: a history of sugar and how it entered the human diet, a physiology lesson on human diseases (esp. diabetes and metabolic syndrome), an exposé of the hypocrisies and manipulations of the food industry (e.g. adding sugar to every processed food product), and a critique of how twentieth- and twenty-first century nutrition science has failed to recognize the dangers of dietary sugar. He explains how difficult it is to isolate sugar as the culprit of not only diabetes and obesity but also cancer, high blood pressure, and dementia, but explains why the clues are all there.
  
  If "sitting is the new smoking" (i.e., is as bad as), then sugar is the new salt, fat, smoking, inactivity (i.e., not only as bad as, but possibly worse than).
• 
  Chris

  I'll save you some time. Too much sugar may be bad for you. I hope you were sitting down for that insight. This book was a mixed bag. The epidemiological data associating the increased consumption of sugar with metabolic syndrome was fascinating. Disappointing was the lack of hard scientific studies defining exactly why that is - sucrose and liver are highlighted and vaguely but not conclusively associated with fatty liver. Ponderous was the third of the book vilifying the sugar industry. They're a company selling a legal product making them a hyper villain is just too 1990. Would I recommend this one? No. Just lay off the sugar and corn syrup.
• 
  Viv JM

  Not exactly a riveting read but very convincing and well referenced. But how on Earth do I tame my sweet tooth?!
• 
  Elizabeth A

  "Nearly 10% of children are thought to have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease."
  
  Let that sink in for a moment. We would never dream of giving kids alcohol or a cigarette, but sugar has nutritional value, so it's OK, right? Not exactly.
  
  I credit Dr. Oz for introducing me to the diseases of metabolic syndrome almost 20 years ago. In that episode he also talked about why sugar is so bad for you. Let me paraphrase: eating sugar is like having sharp razor blades tearing up your arteries. Well, that's an image that has never left me. Once I realized just how much sugar was in everything we ate, I removed most of the white and processed foods from our home. Most of the actual sugar too.
  
  However, I have a sweet tooth, and that's an understatement. I've given up on sugar, and fallen off the wagon, and then got on again. I've learned much about the formulation of fat, sugar, and salt in foods to create a bliss point (and if you have yet to read that book by Michael Moss, would highly recommend it). This is another book to help my brain cement why I want to get off the sugar ride.
  
  I found the history of sugar fascinating, and there is much research and studies covered here that should be talked about on the news daily. Our lack of health is a clear and present danger, and we only seem to be getting sicker, so where is the outrage? There is so much I learned here, like how tobacco soaked in sugar is the technology that made the industry take flight. Sugar is not your friend, and yet somehow we cannot celebrate or mourn or relax or take a breather without a hit. Learning more about the powerful forces behind this industry was eye opening.
  
  The reason I deducted a star was because the writing is rather stilted and a bit of slog to get through at times. Still, there are so many sections highlighted in my copy for review. If you've never read about this topic I'd suggest starting with the book mentioned earlier and then make your way here.
  
  As an aside, this sweet toothed sugar junkie is off the sugar ride, and it has been way easier than I would have ever believed possible. Now, that is truly sweet.
• 
  Sher

  A stunning indictment against sugar and the way Big Sugar has manipulated people's desires and addictions, so they cannot do without sugar. 2/3 of Americans will be Type Two Diabetic within 20 years. People literally are addicted to sugar and carbs. It's incredible the way food manufactures have destroyed the health of people, especially low income folks. Making them want more and more. The other section of the book I really enjoyed was the first third, which traces the historical connection of sugar - how sugar was made, and the slave industry around sugar, and how sweets relate to the primitive diet. Well researched and clearly written. Get an education - so you know - it is not your fault you love sugar, it's been programmed into your biology, and you are being controlled by monied interests. You cannot avoid sugar until you actually detox from it. Period. But, when you do-- enjoy a feeling of empowerment and freedom beyond anything you have experienced so far. To just have sugar be no big deal anymore. Wouldn't that be lovely?
• 
  Andrea Looney

  Not what I thought it would be about. It was a history of sugar, not why you shouldn't eat it.
• 
  Scott Diamond

  This book wasn't what I'd hoped. I do believe we consume too much sugar and that it is detrimental to our health but the evidence provided in this book was far from overwhelming. In fairness. as the author points out, we don't get to conduct the experiment of eating a high sugar diet w/o the rest of the factors of modern western society.
  
  The book itself has quite a bit of discussion of the history of sugar, sugar lobby, FDA history etc but it isn't until about 2/3rds through the book that he presents evidence on health issues. Much of the book has info that anyone who has been reading in media has heard before. The author also doesn't address some controversial issues. For example he defines sugar broadly (including high fructose corn syrup). But he doesn't provide guidance on eating fruit. If sugar is as bad as he suggests then wouldn't it follow that we should also not eat very much fruit? This is largely not discussed.
  
  The book did get me to reaffirm my desire to eat healthier and the history was somewhat interesting but I didn't get much more than that from it.
• 
  Steve Peifer

  I defy anyone to read this and not question what they eat and how you eat. But it is much more than that. The author's goal is to link the sugar industry's cover up of the enormous damage that sugar has done to what the tobacco industry did with smoking. The old Watergate question of What did they know and when did they know it is especially apt. I read Sugar Blues in the 70's and it was an attack on sugar; this is more an attack on an industry that knew the damage they were doing but there was too much money involved for them to stop. It's also an indictment of a scientific community that can be paid off. It is very much worth the read.
• 
  Denise Cormaney

  Every American needs to read this book.
  
  This isn't a diet book. There are no diet plans, no recipes, nothing about losing weight. He isn't a doctor trying to get rich by selling a book based on the latest food craze. Taubes is a science writer, and he presents evidence to prove that sugar is the cause of every modern disease in the Western world. Sound like an exaggeration? It isn't. He makes a solid case.
  
  Unless you have gone deep into the research yourself, you probably believe what we've all been told:
  
  -Sugar is essentially harmless. Yes, you shouldn't eat a lot because it is "empty calories" and has no nutritional value. You don't want too many of your daily calories spent on food that doesn't have any essential vitamins and minerals. But in moderation, there's nothing wrong with the occasional sweet treat as long as the rest of your diet is "healthy". (wrong)
  
  -People who are obese eat too much and move too little. It's all about energy balance (calories in/calories out). (wrong)
  
  -Dietary fat causes chronic disease (obesity, heart disease, cancer); specifically butter, eggs, dairy, and fatty meats. You order your pancakes with a side of turkey bacon, thinking you're making a healthy choice. (wrong)
  
  This book is dense with facts, but it is a compelling read. Parts of it made me *so* angry. People, we have been lied to, and it's killing us. Taubes gives us the history of the sugar lobby (which Franklin Roosevelt called "the most powerful pressure group that has descended on the national capital during our lifetime." In the '60s, the Silver Anvil Award went to the Madison Avenue firm the Sugar Association hired to wage a sugar-defense campaign. The award was for "the forging of public opinion." The purpose of that campaign? To assure the public that sugar is safe. In 1964 a Scottish physician was quoted in The Lancet as saying: "The refining of sugar may yet prove to have been a greater tragedy for civilized man than the discovery of tobacco.") They used their influence to suppress scientific research and to sway politicians to affect public policy. The parallels to the tobacco industry are clear. It's infuriating when you read the studies and the history that Taubes presents in this book.
  
  But we expect industries to make money at the expense of the public. The part that was really infuriating was how the NIH has played a major role in this. They had studies dating from the '40-'60s that showed it was sugar, not dietary fat, that raises triglycerides. They had studies showing that too much sugar causes metabolic syndrome. But here's the pivotal moment that got us to where we are now: in the late 1960's, the NIH set out to confirm this hypothesis: "a low-fat diet plus blood pressure medication will help people live longer." In 1982 they published the results, and THEY FAILED TO CONFIRM THE HYPOTHESIS. Men on low-fat diets suffered MORE deaths than men who ate more fat. They ran a second trial using cholesterol-lowering meds, and published the results in 1984. The results showed that the meds helped, but just barely. Based on that study alone, the NIH, concerned about deaths from heart disease, ASSUMED that if a cholesterol-lowering drug helped reduce deaths, it should be the recommendation for all people over the age of two to eat a low-fat diet. They undertook a massive public relations campaign to sell a low-fat, high-carb diet, and we've been living with the consequences ever since. The NIH did the study again, this time with women, starting in the early '90s. They published their results in 2006, and once again, they failed to confirm the hypothesis. MORE WOMEN DIED EATING A LOW-FAT DIET, one with whole grains and less red meat, than women who ate more fat. And yet the official recommendations haven't changed. You can thank the sugar lobby for that. They benefit from our collective ignorance.
  
  And can't we see that this is true? All we have to do is look around and see that we are getting more and more unhealthy. Think this sounds crazy? Try giving up all sugar for a week (read your labels, it's in everything) and see how you feel. That first week will be HARD, because you are addicted. It's as addicting as cocaine.
  
  As someone who has struggled with weight, this book confirmed what I know to be true from personal experience. It's not about eating less. Some people are genetically predisposed to being sensitive to sugar. If you are, then you will have a hormonal, metabolic response to sugar that will only get worse over time. Your body will secrete too much insulin, which will then cause you to store those calories as fat. That body fat then secretes its own hormones, putting you into a state called Metabolic Syndrome. No amount of calorie reduction will lead to permanent weight loss. Eventually your body will become insulin-resistant. This is why you can eat a low-fat diet of only 1200 calories and exercise everyday, and still remain overweight! If you restrict calories you may lose weight at first, but you will gain it all back (just google "The Biggest Loser contestants" and read about how they've all ended up heavier than when they started.)
  
  Taubes also gives evidence that sugar is at the root of cancer and dementia. He has less evidence to present here (compared to the overwhelming evidence tying sugar to heart disease and diabetes), but he does have peer-reviewed, scientific studies to back up these claims. The research here is new and still emerging, but the correlation is undeniable (i.e. cancer and dementia are nearly nonexistent in cultures that don't eat a Western diet, but then appear within one-to-two generations when a culture adopts a Western diet).
  
  I know this is a bummer. We love our sweets. We can't imagine celebrating a birthday without a cake, or Christmas without a gajillion treats. We associate love and comfort with our favorite foods, with Grandma's cookies. I'm the same way. We think that this is how we've always done things, but as you'll read in this book, refined sugar hasn't been around that long. Maybe if we can wean ourselves off sugar, we could get to a place where we truly only eat it a few times a year. (Could a former smoker have a cigarette only two or three times a year...? Is that even possible?) Sigh.
  
  Every American needs to read this book.
• 
  Mehrsa

  I literally stopped eating sugar the second I finished this book, but ahh my kids are addicted. I think if I were to pick one Taubes book, it would be the why we get fat book because it has better research. he makes a lot of crazy claims here that are unsupported, but that I guess I kind of buy. I mean, I don't think sugar causes cancer and alzheimers because those diseases started appearing once we started eating sugar. We started eating lots of sugar after we took care of the plague and other diseases so now we live long enough for cancer to kill us off. But does sugar make us fat? sure.
  
  Also, I'm surprised he doesn't talk much about Nelson Aldrich in his sugar history. The dude was crazy corrupt and controlled the senate and was a huge sugar mogul. I'm sure he's relevant in the origin story of why sugar was not vilified early in the century
• 
  El

  We are so screwed.
• 
  Nicole

  You’re not gonna like this. But in your heart, you already know it’s true. Sugar is killing us. Slowly. It takes years and even decades to see its full effect, and that’s what makes it so insidious. After year of eating with apparent impunity, it ends in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
  
  Taubes, taking an epidemiological approach to the subject, subscribes to the theory of sugar as a hormonal regulatory disrupter that has a different metabolic effect than other substances. That is, a calorie of sugar is not equal to other calories - it changes the way the body stores fat and leads to insulin resistance, a precursor to the metabolic syndrome that’s responsible for a whole host of chronic diseases. While most observers just fat-shame people for overindulging and taking in too many calories, lab studies with rats show that even when keeping calorie intake the same, the rats who had sugar still gained weight, vs those who did not.
  
  Taubes is particularly strong when he explores the role the sugar industry has played in skewing scientific research and public opinion to avoid blame for America’s health catastrophe (to include speciously discrediting artificial sweeteners.)
  
  So why only 3 stars? For starters, the book
  is incredibly tedious. But also, while I completely agree that sugar is a primary cause of poor health in America, I think it’s too simplistic to boil it down to being the only cause. Nutrition is incredibly complex, and there are so many deficiencies in the diets produced by our highly processed, industrialized food system that other factors (such as saturated fat, refined flours, and sodium) cannot be completely ruled out as co-contributors.
• 
  Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer

  If this were a criminal case, The Case Against Sugar would be the argument for the prosecution

  
  
  And if I were the judge in the case, I would probably struggle to resist turning up for the first day in court wearing a black cap to signal the pre-ordained outcome of the trial – an outcome the cover of the book anticipates with its sugary noose.
  
  My own distillation of current wisdom on diet would probably be something like “everything in moderation, except refined sugar which you should avoid as much as you can”.
  
  So I am predisposed towards the arguments of this book, which would go even further than my initial fears about sugar, by seeking to pin almost all modern/Western illnesses (gout, hypertension, even cancer and Alzheimer’s) back to sugar via its effects on insulin resistance and disturbances on hormonal and metabolic processes.
  
  Nevertheless I struggled when reading this book.
  
  Were it a court case of course Taubes own witnesses would be subject to cross examination by the defense, and the defense case itself would be presented (with Taubes having the opportunity to cross examine their witnesses, but with those witnesses being able to respond to that cross examination).
  
  Instead we get a one sided case – with witnesses (normally nutritionists or those in the associated fields of medical science) for the defense quoted selectively and with their conclusions and motives (normally that they are in some way funded by the sugar or associated industry – either to defend that industry or to deflect blame elsewhere, most successfully to dietary fats) impugned by the prosecution; whereas witnesses for the prosecution (effectively drawn from the same bodies, albeit with more emphasis on medical scientists than nutritionists who Taubes believe lack the rigour of the scientific method) given a free ride (we are for example never told if any of their work was funded by those industries associated with dietary fats) and some of their studies are blatantly subject to the same faults (often selective sampling or confirmation bias) as those Taubes criticises.
  
  Taubes also I feel lacks sometimes scientific rigour – the very fact he accuses other (particularly nutritionists of).
  
  He applies the principle of Occam’s razor to argue against a multi-factor (for example bad cholesterol fats, sedentary lifestyles) cause of Western illnesses – arguing the principle means you should seek for only a single cause.
  
  As a statistician I struggle with this conclusion when it is not backed up by some form of multi-variate analysis.
  
  He also seems to confuse correlation with causality and this (like his Occam’s razor approach) is crucial to his refection of a multi-factor cause.
  
  And the book is much the weaker for these two faults – as despite the overwhelming evidence I wanted to hear the counter arguments and weigh them up for myself.
  
  I was reminded in this respect of a number of books on man made climate change – where despite being pre-disposed towards their conclusions their selective polemic actually meant the books made me more rather than less unsure of them by the time.
  
  So overall definitely an important book – for anyone who is a sugar-is-bad sceptic (or thinks there is no difference between a sugar calorie and another calorie) I would strongly recommended it.
  
  For those already convinced of the sugar-is-bad hypothesis you will find much here to confirm your views (if that is what you are after) but little to help you test and (if I can be pardoned the pun) refine them.
• 
  Katie

  When I picked up The Case Against Sugar, I was hoping for a book that would help me overcome a serious sweet tooth - One that would help me feel less obsessed with sugar. Expectations are risky, and are of no fault of Gary Taubes, the author. Unfortunately this book didn't do the trick. I found the information on the introduction of sugar, the lobbying, and the addiction interesting, but Taubes lost me vilifying sugar as it relates to carbohydrates - no, I'm not talking about simple, but complex carbohydrates. His research demonstrated what we all know, however, that simple carbs and sugar are killing us, causing us to gain weight, and making us sick. As someone who strongly believes that animal products do that too, I felt he was missing a very important side of the conversation. I was surprised he didn't mention that more, since the evidence is so strong and clinically significant. Blaming sugar as the single culprit just felt hyperbolic.
  
  I still believe sugar is awful, I just haven't found the right book to educate myself, yet. I found the second half of Case Against Sugar to be repetitive, but it still had some valuable information. I am always ready to learn.
• 
  Петър Стойков

  Превантивната медицина като цяло изостава от останалата част на медицинската наука, а въпросите относно храненето и здравето, може да се каже, са точно в момента до под кривата круша.
  
  Няма как по друг начин да опиша факта, че хипотезата относно сърдечно-съдовите заболявания като резултат от наситените животински мазнини, господстваща в медицината през последните 50 години бива не само все по-категорично опровергавана, но и става ясно, че реални доказателства за нея не е имало от самото начало.
  
  В същото време, доказателствата и изследванията за всеобхватната роля на инсулиновата резистентност и метаболитния синдром в т.н. заболявания на западния начин на живот или "заболявания на цивилизацията" като резултат главно от неконтролируемия прием на въглехидрати и по-специално захар, все още трудно си проправят път сред лекарите както на високи (медицинските организации и официалните им препоръки), така и ниски (лични лекари и съветите, които дават) нива.
  
  Гари Таубс е първият здравен журналист, който публикува във водеща медия (сп. Тайм през 2007 г.) статия относно заблудата относно мазнините като основни причинители на сърдечносъдови заболявания. От тогава човекът се придържа към същата тема на писане и това е третата му книга по въпроса, в която нищи и върти едни и същи неща, па дано на някого му стане ясно.
  
  The Case Against Sugar не съдържа нищо радикално ново, което не може да се прочете в предишните две книги - тя само фокусира върху захарта, вместо върху въглехидратите като цяло, като набляга на качеството й да е пристрастяваща и разглежда влияниет�� й върху човешкото здраве през изминалите столетия до сега.
• 
  Andy

  Taubes is a very good writer and makes a good case against sugar, but he already did that in two previous books. What he adds here is some more explanation of why the authorities keep saying sugar is not the problem even in instances where the evidence shows that it clearly is. He also makes a good argument about if sugar is the main culprit behind metabolic syndrome, then it's a big deal for lots of diseases other than just obesity itself. He even makes a solid argument for sugar's role in the lung cancer pandemic.
  
  I think he pushes things too far when he reacts against Big Junk's use of multi-factor causality as an excuse to dismiss sugar's role. Sugar can be one cause and even the major cause, AND there can still be other causes (stress, plastics, microbiome, whatever). I think he could get more people on his side by settling for sugar as A cause vs. THE cause. But I can understand his frustration when all these authorities are still, for example, telling diabetic people that toast with maple syrup is a good breakfast, and still pushing cereal with sugared non-fat milk for schoolchildren.
  
  Given that the book is called "The case against sugar" I think it's OK that he's not bending over backward to be even-handed.
• 
  Katie

  This was a really informative and detailed read! There were some things in here that I already knew, but the level of detail, from the history to talking about different case studies and everything was really eye opening and I enjoyed learning more about this. However, if I were trying to physically read this (instead of the audiobook), I don't think I ever would have finished because it's pretty dense.
• 
  Tessann

  I think Mr. Taubes may be right about the dangers of refined sugar, but Lord did he really have to explain every little chemical reaction and every single study ever done! I got an article from my Sister which was a brief synopsis of the book by Taubes, called "Is Sugar Killing Us?" That article covered everything in the book in a "beautiful" nutshell!!