The sugar conspiracy

The sugar conspiracy

Yes, I know, it does sound weird. It’s only the beginning and you might find me as a conspiracy theorist but I swear im not. First of all, this article was published by The Guardian on April the 7th, 2016. The Guardian is largely known for their pro labour party position, so it’s the left of British political opinion. The title, with conspiracy in it, is playing on our fears. And the article starts with a kinda David and goliath story. John Yudkin published “White, pure and deadly” in 1972, a book who showed the largely unknown risks of sugar. However we now recognise this book as a precursor, at the time the food industry destroyed his career and John died as a forgotten man. During the following years, the enemy number one of public health was appointed : saturated fat. The UK and the US governements issued dietary guidelines and its prominent recommendation was to cut back from fat. Yet our body needs energy and it comes in 3 forms : fat, protein, and carbohydrate which is most of the time sugar. Accordingly to their scientifical knowledge at the time, these guideline could seem right, but we now know that they weren’t at all. Because of this guideline and the shift in the diets, the world grew up fatter and sicker. The amount of obese person trebled in the uk, and went from 15prcent to 35prcent in the US, in just 20 years. USA became the fattest country in the world, and the UK in Europe, and they are still. Lots of people died because of type 2 diabetes, induced by the overconsumption of sugar, making your insulin, from your pancreas, not enough to control your sugar rate in your blood. Cardiovascular illnesses also killed a lot of persons. But we can’t really blame no one, yes Yudkin’s work circled this problem in red, but who could’ve known that it would turn into the biggest public health issue of the 21st century ? To understand how and why the fat was at the time, the biggest enemy of public health, we have to go back to 1955. The former president of the US, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. Rather than keeping this information confidential, he revealed everything to the public opinion, and his personal doctor, Dr Paul Dudley White appointed the causes of this heart attack : fat and cholesterol. Yes, the LDL (low density lipoprotein) is the “bad” cholesterol and it can cause fatty deposits making it hard for the blood to flow in your arteries, it reduces their elasticity and diameter. It’s a factor of risk for cancer, heart attack, strokes (NB AVC accident vasculaire cerebral, dans ce cas ischémique donc un caillot de “gras” qui se détache de l’artère et bouche le sang, asphyxiant le cerveau, voir hémorragique à cause de la perte d’élasticité de l’aumgentation de la pression intracranienne avec rupture d’anévrisme). To conclude, we still don’t really know the roles that sugar, fat and cholesterol play, but we do know that we must eat healthy, have a proper hygiena, and practise physical activities to avoid cardiovascular illnesses.

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