Taubes makes hay of the fact that Keys was supported in part by the sugar industry, painting Yudkin as a righteous underdog standing up to a corrupt and aggressive Keys. These views are embodied by the American researcher Ancel Keys and the British researcher John Yudkin, respectively.

For example, The Case Against Sugar portrays an epic struggle decades ago between researchers who believed that saturated fat was the primary cause of coronary heart disease, and those who believed that sugar was. His discussion of the history of research on sugar, dietary fat, obesity, and noncommunicable disease is less compelling due to its one-sided nature. He also provides a history of the use of sugar in tobacco processing and how it may have contributed to the rise of cigarette smoking, which I wasn’t aware of. In The Case Against Sugar, he presents a colorful and informative history of sugar and the sugar industry. Taubes excels at constructing detailed historical narratives to make his points. I’ll break the review into two parts, the first covering the historical aspects of the book, and the second covering its scientific aspects. In case anyone is wondering, I’ve never had any contact with the sugar industry and I have no other relevant conflicts of interest. This differs from the prevailing view in the research and public health communities that obesity and noncommunicable disease are multi-factorial, with refined sugar playing a role among other things like excess calorie intake, physical inactivity, cigarette smoking, alcohol and illegal drug use, and various other diet and lifestyle factors.

The Case Against Sugar is a journey through sugar history and science that argues the point that sugar is the principal cause of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and many other common noncommunicable diseases.

In this post, I’ll provide something that is not available anywhere else (to my knowledge): a review of the book from the perspective of a former researcher who is an expert in some of the topics it discusses. I reluctantly agreed that it would probably be a good idea for me to do so. I’ve been asked by a number of people to review Gary Taubes’s new book, The Case Against Sugar.

The case against sugar