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Nutritionists have found it in themselves to blame our chronic ills on virtually any element of the diet or environment – on fats and cholesterol, on protein and meat, on gluten and glycoproteins, growth hormones and oestrogens and antibiotics, on the absence of fibre, vitamins and minerals, and surely on the presence of salt, on processed foods in general, on over-consumption and sedentary behaviour – before they'll concede that it's even possible that sugar has played a unique role in any way other than merely getting us all to eat too damn much. And so, when a few informed authorities over the years did indeed risk their credibility by suggesting sugar was to blame, their words had little effect on the beliefs of their colleagues or on the eating habits of a population that had come to rely on sugar and sweets as the rewards for the sufferings of daily life.
營養學家發現，他們自己就把我們的慢性疾病歸咎于幾乎任何飲食或環境因素——脂肪和膽固醇、蛋白質和肉類、谷蛋白和糖蛋白、生長激素和雌激素和抗生素、纖維、維生素和礦物質的缺乏、當然還有鹽、加工食品、過度消費和久坐行為——在他們承認“除了吃得太多，糖還可能以某種方式發揮著獨特的作用”之前。因此，多年來，當一些知情的權威人士冒著可信度的風險提出糖是罪魁禍首時，他們的話對他們同事的信念，或對那些依賴糖和糖果作為生活中痛苦的回報的人們來說幾乎沒有影響，他們不會改變自己的飲食習慣。
So how do we establish a safe level of sugar consumption? In 1986, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that most experts considered sugar safe. And when the relevant research communities settled on caloric imbalance as the cause of obesity and saturated fat as the dietary cause of heart disease, the clinical trials necessary to begin to answer this question were never pursued.
那么我們如何確定一個安全的糖攝入量呢？1986年，美國食品和藥物管理局(FDA)得出結論，大多數專家認為糖是安全的。當相關研究團體將熱量不平衡確定為肥胖的原因，將飽和脂肪確定為心臟病的飲食原因時，他們從未進行過可以解開這一問題的臨床試驗。
The traditional response to the how-little-is-too-much question is that we should eat sugar in moderation – not eat too much of it. But we only know we're consuming too much when we're getting fatter or manifesting other symptoms of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
對于“多少才算多”這個問題，通常的回答是我們吃糖應適量，不能吃太多。但只有當我們變胖或者出現胰島素抵抗和代謝綜合征的其他癥狀時，我們才知道自己的糖攝入量多了。
Insulin resistance is the fundamental defect present in type 2 diabetes, and perhaps obesity too. Those who are obese and diabetic also tend to be hypertensive; they have a higher risk of heart disease, cancer and strokes, and possibly dementia and even Alzheimer's as well. If sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are the cause of obesity, diabetes and insulin resistance, then they're also the most likely dietary trigger of these other diseases. Put simply: without these sugars in our diets, the cluster of related illnesses would be far less common than it is today.
胰島素抵抗是2型糖尿病的基本缺陷，可能還有肥胖。肥胖和糖尿病患者也有可能患上高血壓，他們患心臟病、癌癥和中風的風險更高，還可能患癡呆甚至阿爾茨海默病。如果糖和高果糖玉米糖漿是肥胖、糖尿病和胰島素抵抗的致因，那么它們也最有可能是這些其他疾病的飲食觸發器。簡而言之：如果我們的飲食中沒有這些糖，相關疾病群就不會像今天這樣常見。
