I just added this book to my Influential Reads and I felt the need to vent about the shocking things I learned.
Author Gary Taubes is an award-winning science writer who studied at Harvard and Columbia graduate school in journalism. Previous best-sellers include Good Calories, Bad Calories (2008) and Why We Get Fat (2011).
On some level, I always knew that sugar was “bad”, but maybe in my ill-informed world and sugar-coated brain, I thought that I could just exercise the effects away. Or perhaps, I filed it away in the category of “everything is OK in moderation”, but for sugar addicts like me moderation (whatever that means) simply doesn’t work.
This book exposes the many ways that sugar has been slowly creeping into our lives without us realizing. After years of consuming just a little bit more, many of us will learn that our reward for this consumption will introduce itself to us by the name: metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, inflammation, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and as Taubes reveals possibly even cancer, hypertension or Alzheimers.
Maybe you’ve heard that sugar is more addicting than cocaine and thought to yourself, “yea yea, it’s just a little sugar and if it was that bad it would be illegal, the government would protect us.” But did you know about the Sugar Industry paying Harvard scientists to cover up the ill effects of sugar while pinning our growing health problems on saturated fat? This little plan worked brilliantly! It led to a huge dietary shift in the US and brainwashed us all to believe that fat is bad. We began consuming all things “fat-free” or “low-fat” without even considering the increased sugar content. The sugar industry succeeded in padding their pockets with dollars and our mid-sections with muffin-tops as we all became a little more sugar-addicted and sickly.
Now, the gig is up, the information is out there, you can’t unread this information! You can choose your next step. You can choose what you eat, what you feed your kids, what food industry you support and how much will-power you invest in getting out of sugar addiction.
If you have reason to suspect that you (like me) are a sugar addict, and you want to learn the truth about what your body needs to look and perform its best. I’m here for you, let’s talk! If you need a bit more convincing I encourage you to check out the work of Gary Taubes, you’ll be a better person for having read his work!
