National Geographic Highlights History of Sugar Consumption

“It seems like every time I study an illness and trace a path to the first
cause, I find my way back to sugar,” opines University of Colorado-Denver
nephrologist Richard Johnson in an August 2013 National Geographic special
feature examining the history of sugar consumption. Titled “Sugar Love: A
Not So Sweet Story,” the article authored by Rich Cohen traces the spread
of sugar from its New Guinea origins throughout the world, in the process
raising questions about the sweetener’s impact on heart disease, diabetes
and obesity in modern populations. As Johnson asks, “Why is it that one-third
of adults [worldwide] have high blood pressure, when in 1900 only 5 percent
had high blood pressure? Why did 153 million people have diabetes in 1980,
and now we’re up to 347 million? Why are more and more Americans obese?
Sugar, we believe, is one of the culprits, if not the major culprit.”

In particular, the article claims that even as Americans have reduced their
consumption of saturated fats, obesity rates have continued to rise, partly
because food producers have replaced the fatty ingredients in their products
with sugar. According to Cohen, however, health and nutrition experts are
now warning that sugar is not only a source of empty calories, but the cause
of fatty liver, high blood pressure and other metabolic disease. “It has nothing
to do with its calories,” Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist at the University of
California, San Francisco, was quoted as saying. “Sugar is a poison by itself
when consumed at high doses.”