Sir,
There are several causative factors for diabetes and sugar is only one of them. Very recently a tenuous connection between meat and diabetes has been established. Many diabetics have come off their medication after replacing junk food with nutritious whole foods. Denis Burkett, of Burkett’s lymphoma fame, said that when he first went to Africa he never saw a case of diabetes in the local populace but the disease began to appear when Africans took to the white man’s diet of sugary foods; appearing first in cities and later in the countryside. Their meat consumption had remained unchanged. I believe that Eskimos have little or no diabetes though they eat a lot of meat but little or no added sugar.
Much of the dietary sugar is in the form of fructose which does not require insulin for its metabolism. Moreover, naturally occurring sugar is very slowly absorbed resulting in a slow insulin response. The problem with added sugar and sugary drinks in particular is that the sugar is rapidly absorbed and there is a resultant over-production of insulin. This eventually wears out the insulin producing cells and starts the diabetic process. At the early stage it is easily reversed but becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on.
The best example of the connection between sugar and diabetes that I can muster up at the moment is the massive decline of diabetes in England and Wales during the war which went pari passu with the decline in sugar consumption. Soon after rationing was ended the rate for diabetes began to rise again.
Michael Nightingale
