Have I given up sugar? No, and I never will, because I make it a point to distinguish non-causal correlations from causal ones.
People often make the mistake of attributing so many harms directly to sugar, in line with the semi-conspiratorial theory of the four white poisons (milk, sugar, white flour, salt). But it's a statistically debunked nonsense.
1. Sugar and diabetes
Sugar is harmful only as an indirect effect. Just like salt or any substance that isn't poison. If you eat lots of sugary — or rather, highly processed — foods, you usually also have an unhealthy diet overall and don't exercise, so you tend to gain weight. If you gain weight for the wrong reasons, you tend to develop type 2 diabetes, inflammatory processes, and ischemic diseases.
But it's not the sugar giving you these effects. It's the lack of proper nutrition and physical activity. As Diabetes UK states:
"While we know sugar doesn't directly cause Type 2 diabetes, you are more likely to get it if you are overweight. Type 2 diabetes is complex, and sugar is unlikely to be the only reason."
2. Sugar and cancer
The story that sugar feeds cancer. True. But it also feeds your normal cells. With the usual naive reductionism, many removed sugar from cancer patients' diets because cancer cells absorb more sugar than normal cells. Except cancer cells absorb everything more than normal cells — that's their main characteristic!
And the benefit of eliminating sugar clashed with the harm of triggering ketogenic processes, which themselves are correlated with increased cancer and ischemic disease risk.
The AICR (American Institute for Cancer Research) says:
"Eating a lot of high-sugar foods may mean more calories than you need, which leads to excess weight and body fat. It is excess body fat that increases risk of many common cancers."
3. Not all sugar is equal
Eating a sugar cube or drinking a Coca-Cola gives you a completely different glycemic spike than getting sugar wrapped in apple fiber. Between these extremes lies an entire world. Treating everything the same means trivializing the problem.
Not to mention the real tragedy: the industrial bliss point — the mix of sugar, salt, and saturated fats. That's what truly damages you, not your mom's cheesecake.
In summary
Raging against sugar indicates linear thinking that doesn't consider broader cause-and-effect relationships. Completely eliminating sugar comes from the same thought model: reductionist, simplistic, pseudo-intellectual. Dangerous like any model that induces a false sense of security.
Eliminating sugar while continuing to consume large amounts of animal saturated fats is sheer contemporary madness — revealing a failure to understand the complexity of the body-food relationship.
I have one life and I think in priorities. I eat sweets and exercise plenty. But I avoid meat, keep saturated fats and industrial bliss-point products low. Like every vegetarian, my blood values tend to be far better than those who follow a "normal" diet minus sugar.
