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White death

(article, Culinate staff)

Against-the-grain science reporter Gary Taubes is tackling conventional dietary wisdom once more, this time taking on sugar and its possible toxicity. (Taubes's earlier efforts to change the accepted stances on dietary fat and exercise have earned him acclaim as well as resistance.) At issue now is whether sugar is, as some scientists claim, poison. In a recent New York Times article, Taubes refers to national obesity expert Robert Lustig, a proponent of the poison theory:

bq. If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

So think twice about that can of soda already.