Tag Archives: Yudkin

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When the British physiologist John Yudkin published Pure, White and Deadly—his 1972 book linking heart disease to sugar consumption—he met strong opposition from the sugar industry. As Geoff Watts writes in this week’s BMJ (doi:10.1136/bmj.e7800), “jobs and research grants that might predictably have come Yudkin’s way did not materialise.” Attacks also included the abrupt cancellation of conferences suspected of promulgating anti-sugar findings, and the book was dismissed as a work of fiction. Enter fat in the role of chief culprit in the rise in heart disease. The fat hypothesis, the chief proponent of which was the American biologist Ancel Keys, influenced policy makers and captured the popular imagination. Meanwhile, writes Watts, medical interest in the sugar hypothesis faded. Yudkin’s book fell out of print and low fat became the buzz phrase in nutrition.

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But in recent years, and with rising obesity becoming one of the main health concerns in the developed world, the sugar hypothesis has started to regain momentum. Recent anti-sugar initiatives include New York city’s restriction on the size of fizzy drinks (BMJ 2012;345:e6768). At the end of last year Penguin Books reissued Pure, White and Deadly, with a new and enthusiastic introduction by US endocrinologist Robert Lustig, which in this week’s BMJ Jack Winkler hails as a medical classic (doi:10.1136/bmj.e8612). And, as if to forestall any further policy initiatives against sugary beverages, this week Coca-Cola launched a television advertisement in the United States acknowledging the obesity problem and attempting to defend the company’s record in producing low calorie drinks.

How science is going sour on sugar – BMJ