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---
  layout: post
  title: Sugar research left a bitter taste
  author: Joe Schwarcz
  source: McGill Blogs
---
  HYPERLINK
"http://blogs.mcgill.ca/oss/2016/09/25/the-right-chemistry-sugar-researc
h-left-a-bitter-taste/"  The Right Chemistry: Sugar research left a
bitter taste 

  

“Is it true that putting a piece of garlic in the rectum at night can
cleanse the body?”

And with that single question posed by an audience member back in 1975,
my chemical focus shifted to food and nutrition. The question came after
one of my first public talks on chemistry at a local library, where I
had described the role chemistry plays in our daily lives, mostly using
dyes, drugs, plastics and cosmetics as examples.

I was sort of taken aback by the question, but managed to stammer
something like “where did you hear that?”

Back came the answer, “from Panic in the Pantry.” After mentioning
that my only experience with garlic had been with rubbing it on toast
with some very satisfying results to the palate, I promised to check out
the reference.

It wasn’t hard to track down Panic in the Pantry in a local bookstore.
The title had suggested some sort of attack on our food system, but this
turned out not to be the case. At least not in the way I had thought.
Flipping through the book I came across terms like “chemophobia,”
“carcinogen,” “additives,” “chemical-free” and “health
foods.” I was intrigued, especially on noting that the book had had
been written by Frederick Stare, a physician with a previous degree in
chemistry who had founded the Department of Nutrition at Harvard’s
School of Public Health, and co-author Elizabeth Whelan. Within a day I
had read Panic in the Pantry from cover to cover and was so captivated
that I dove into the turbid waters of nutrition and food chemistry with
great enthusiasm. Ever since then, I have been trying to keep my head
above water, buffeted by the growing waves of information and
misinformation.

Panic in the Pantry focused on what the authors believed were
unrealistic worries about our food supply, vigorously attacking the
popular lay notion that “if you can’t pronounce it, it must be
harmful.” Yes, that daft message was around long before the Food Babe
made it her anthem. In truth, the risks and benefits of a chemical are a
consequence of its molecular structure, and are determined by
appropriate studies, not by the number of syllables in its name. Stare
and Whelan also challenged the “Delaney Clause,” a piece of U.S.
legislation stating that no additive shall be deemed safe if it has been
shown to cause cancer in any species upon any type of exposure. They
pointed at studies that showed very different effects of chemicals in
rodents and humans and maintained that it was unrealistic to condemn
additives if exposure was not taken into account. “Too much sun can
cause skin cancer, but does that mean we should stay indoors all the
time?” they asked.

What about the curious case of the clove of garlic in the rectum? An
excellent example of a misinterpretation of information, something that
I have seen much too often. In a discussion of food faddism through the
ages, the authors introduced the antics of one Adolphus Hohensee, who
had forged a career as a “health food” advocate after his real
estate business had landed him in jail for mail fraud. The dietary guru
told his audiences that the sex act should last an hour, and if they did
not measure up to this level of sexual adequacy it was because they had
a diet laden with additives.

Hohensee’s answer to the chemical onslaught was a clove of garlic in
the rectum at night, with proof of its efficacy being the scent of
garlic on the breath in the morning. Obviously, the garlic had worked
its way from bottom to top, cleansing everything in-between. Far from
promoting this regimen, Stare and Whelan had used it to highlight the
extent of nutritional quackery.

I found most of the arguments in Panic in the Pantry highly palatable,
but there was a discussion of one chemical that left a somewhat bitter
taste. That chemical was sugar. I had been quite taken by Pure, White
and Deadly, a 1972 book by British physiologist John Yudkin, who made a
compelling case linking sugar to heart disease, cavities, diabetes,
obesity and possibly some cancers. Stare dismissed sugar as a culprit,
implicating saturated fats as the cause of coronary disease. That to me
seemed not to meet the standard of evidence that was applied to other
issues in Panic in the Pantry.

As it turns out, there was a reason for Stare’s dismissal of sugar as
a health problem. In 1965, the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), the
industry’s trade association, asked Stare to sit on its advisory board
because of his expertise in the dietary causes of heart disease. The
sugar industry was extremely worried about Yudkin’s growing influence
and decided to embark on a major program to take the focus off sugar and
direct it toward fats. Stare’s defence of sugar as a quick energy food
that should be put in coffee or tea several times a day and calling Coca
Cola a healthy between meals snack was welcomed by the industry.

As we have now learned from historical documents brought to light in a
paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the SRF paid
members of Stare’s department to carry out a literature review,
overseen by Stare, designed to point a finger at fats while expressing
skepticism about sugar’s supposed criminality. That review was
published in the New England Journal of Medicine without any disclosure
of sugar industry funding and successfully steered readers away from
associating sugar with heart disease. While Stare, who died in 2002, was
correct about many aspects of unfounded chemophobia, his reputation has
now been tarnished by the undeclared payments received by his department
from the sugar industry.

Sugar, as we now know, is not as innocent as Stare had claimed. But at
least he never did suggest garlic in the rectum to cleanse toxins. As
far as I know, neither has the Food Babe.

 

Dr. Joe Schwarcz  PhD

Sept 25th/2016