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REJUVENATION FORUM>
REFINED SUGAR, THE SWEETEST POISON OF ALL
July 25, 2006
REFINED SUGAR
The Sweetest Poison of All
A multitude of common physical and mental ailments are
strongly linked to the consuming of 'pure', refined sugar.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1 (December
1999 - January 2000).
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia.
editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com
by William Dufty © 1975
Extracted/edited from his book Sugar Blues
First published by Chilton Book Co. Padnor, PA, USA
Currently published by Warner Books, USA.
WHY SUGAR IS TOXIC TO THE BODY
In 1957, Dr William Coda Martin tried to answer the
question: When is a food a food and when is it a poison?
His working definition of "poison" was: "Medically: Any
substance applied to the body, ingested or developed within
the body, which causes or may cause disease. Physically:
Any substance which inhibits the activity of a catalyst
which is a minor substance, chemical or enzyme that
activates a reaction."1 The dictionary gives an even
broader definition for "poison": "to exert a harmful
influence on, or to pervert".
Dr Martin classified refined sugar as a poison because it
has been depleted of its life forces, vitamins and
minerals. "What is left consists of pure, refined
carbohydrates. The body cannot utilize this refined starch
and carbohydrate unless the depleted proteins, vitamins and
minerals are present. Nature supplies these elements in
each plant in quantities sufficient to metabolize the
carbohydrate in that particular plant. There is no excess
for other added carbohydrates. Incomplete carbohydrate
metabolism results in the formation of 'toxic metabolite'
such as pyruvic acid and abnormal sugars containing five
carbon atoms. Pyruvic acid accumulates in the brain and
nervous system and the abnormal sugars in the red blood
cells. These toxic metabolites interfere with the
respiration of the cells. They cannot get sufficient oxygen
to survive and function normally. In time, some of the
cells die. This interferes with the function of a part of
the body and is the beginning of degenerative disease."2
Refined sugar is lethal when ingested by humans because it
provides only that which nutritionists describe as "empty"
or "naked" calories. It lacks the natural minerals which
are present in the sugar beet or cane. In addition, sugar
is worse than nothing because it drains and leaches the
body of precious vitamins and minerals through the demand
its digestion, detoxification and elimination make upon
one's entire system.
So essential is balance to our bodies that we have many
ways to provide against the sudden shock of a heavy intake
of sugar. Minerals such as sodium (from salt), potassium
and magnesium (from vegetables), and calcium (from the
bones) are mobilised and used in chemical transmutation;
neutral acids are produced which attempt to return the
acid-alkaline balance factor of the blood to a more normal
state.
Sugar taken every day produces a continuously overacid
condition, and more and more minerals are required from
deep in the body in the attempt to rectify the imbalance.
Finally, in order to protect the blood, so much calcium is
taken from the bones and teeth that decay and general
weakening begin.
Excess sugar eventually affects every organ in the body.
Initially, it is stored in the liver in the form of glucose
(glycogen). Since the liver's capacity is limited, a daily
intake of refined sugar (above the required amount of
natural sugar) soon makes the liver expand like a balloon.
When the liver is filled to its maximum capacity, the
excess glycogen is returned to the blood in the form of
fatty acids. These are taken to every part of the body and
stored in the most inactive areas: the belly, the buttocks,
the breasts and the thighs.
When these comparatively harmless places are completely
filled, fatty acids are then distributed among active
organs, such as the heart and kidneys. These begin to slow
down; finally their tissues degenerate and turn to fat. The
whole body is affected by their reduced ability, and
abnormal blood pressure is created. The parasympathetic
nervous system is affected; and organs governed by it, such
as the small brain, become inactive or paralysed. (Normal
brain function is rarely thought of as being as biologic as
digestion.) The circulatory and lymphatic systems are
invaded, and the quality of the red corpuscles starts to
change. An overabundance of white cells occurs, and the
creation of tissue becomes slower. Our body's tolerance and
immunising power becomes more limited, so we cannot respond
properly to extreme attacks, whether they be cold, heat,
mosquitoes or microbes.
Excessive sugar has a strong mal-effect on the functioning
of the brain. The key to orderly brain function is glutamic
acid, a vital compound found in many vegetables. The B
vitamins play a major role in dividing glutamic acid into
antagonistic-complementary compounds which produce a
"proceed" or "control" response in the brain. B vitamins
are also manufactured by symbiotic bacteria which live in
our intestines. When refined sugar is taken daily, these
bacteria wither and die, and our stock of B vitamins gets
very low. Too much sugar makes one sleepy; our ability to
calculate and remember is lost.
SUGAR: HARMFUL TO HUMANS AND ANIMALS
Shipwrecked sailors who ate and drank nothing but sugar and
rum for nine days surely went through some of this trauma;
the tales they had to tell created a big public relations
problem for the sugar pushers.
This incident occurred when a vessel carrying a cargo of
sugar was shipwrecked in 1793. The five surviving sailors
were finally rescued after being marooned for nine days.
They were in a wasted condition due to starvation, having
consumed nothing but sugar and rum.
The eminent French physiologist F. Magendie was inspired by
that incident to conduct a series of experiments with
animals, the results of which he published in 1816. In the
experiments, he fed dogs a diet of sugar or olive oil and
water. All the dogs wasted and died.3
The shipwrecked sailors and the French physiologist's
experimental dogs proved the same point. As a steady diet,
sugar is worse than nothing. Plain water can keep you alive
for quite some time. Sugar and water can kill you. Humans
[and animals] are "unable to subsist on a diet of sugar".4
The dead dogs in Professor Magendie's laboratory alerted
the sugar industry to the hazards of free scientific
inquiry. From that day to this, the sugar industry has
invested millions of dollars in behind-the-scenes,
subsidised science. The best scientific names that money
could buy have been hired, in the hope that they could one
day come up with something at least pseudoscientific in the
way of glad tidings about sugar.
It has been proved, however, that (1) sugar is a major
factor in dental decay; (2) sugar in a person's diet does
cause overweight; (3) removal of sugar from diets has cured
symptoms of crippling, worldwide diseases such as diabetes,
cancer and heart illnesses.
Sir Frederick Banting, the codiscoverer of insulin, noticed
in 1929 in Panama that, among sugar plantation owners who
ate large amounts of their refined stuff, diabetes was
common. Among native cane-cutters, who only got to chew the
raw cane, he saw no diabetes.
However, the story of the public relations attempts on the
part of the sugar manufacturers began in Britain in 1808
when the Committee of West India reported to the House of
Commons that a prize of twenty-five guineas had been
offered to anyone who could come up with the most
"satisfactory" experiments to prove that unrefined sugar
was good for feeding and fattening oxen, cows, hogs and
sheep.5 Food for animals is often seasonal, always
expensive. Sugar, by then, was dirt cheap. People weren't
eating it fast enough.
Naturally, the attempt to feed livestock with sugar and
molasses in England in 1808 was a disaster. When the
Committee on West India made its fourth report to the House
of Commons, one Member of Parliament, John Curwin, reported
that he had tried to feed sugar and molasses to calves
without success. He suggested that perhaps someone should
try again by sneaking sugar and molasses into skimmed milk.
Had anything come of that, you can be sure the West Indian
sugar merchants would have spread the news around the
world. After this singular lack of success in pushing sugar
in cow pastures, the West Indian sugar merchants gave up.
With undaunted zeal for increasing the market demand for
the most important agricultural product of the West Indies,
the Committee of West India was reduced to a tactic that
has served the sugar pushers for almost 200 years:
irrelevant and transparently silly testimonials from
faraway, inaccessible people with some kind of "scientific"
credentials. One early commentator called them "hired
consciences".
The House of Commons committee was so hard-up for local
cheerleaders on the sugar question, it was reduced to
quoting a doctor from faraway Philadelphia, a leader of the
recent American colonial rebellion: "The great Dr Rush of
Philadelphia is reported to have said that 'sugar contains
more nutrients in the same bulk than any other known
substance'." (Emphasis added.) At the same time, the same
Dr Rush was preaching that masturbation was the cause of
insanity! If a weasel-worded statement like that was
quoted, one can be sure no animal doctor could be found in
Britain who would recommend sugar for the care and feeding
of cows, pigs or sheep.
While preparing his epochal volume, A History of Nutrition,
published in 1957, Professor E. V. McCollum (Johns Hopkins
University), sometimes called America's foremost
nutritionist and certainly a pioneer in the field, reviewed
approximately 200,000 published scientific papers,
recording experiments with food, their properties, their
utilisation and their effects on animals and men. The
material covered the period from the mid-18th century to
1940. From this great repository of scientific inquiry,
McCollum selected those experiments which he regarded as
significant "to relate the story of progress in discovering
human error in this segment of science [of nutrition]".
Professor McCollum failed to record a single controlled
scientific experiment with sugar between 1816 and 1940.
Unhappily, we must remind ourselves that scientists today,
and always, accomplish little without a sponsor. The
protocols of modern science have compounded the costs of
scientific inquiry.
We have no right to be surprised when we read the
introduction to McCollum's A History of Nutrition and find
that "The author and publishers are indebted to The
Nutrition Foundation, Inc., for a grant provided to meet a
portion of the cost of publication of this book". What, you
might ask, is The Nutrition Foundation, Inc.? The author
and the publishers don't tell you. It happens to be a front
organisation for the leading sugar-pushing conglomerates in
the food business, including the American Sugar Refining
Company, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Curtis Candy Co., General
Foods, General Mills, Nestlé Co., Pet Milk Co. and Sunshine
Biscuits-about 45 such companies in all.
Perhaps the most significant thing about McCollum's 1957
history was what he left out: a monumental earlier work
described by an eminent Harvard professor as "one of those
epochal pieces of research which makes every other
investigator desirous of kicking himself because he never
thought of doing the same thing". In the 1930s, a research
dentist from Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Weston A. Price, travelled
all over the world-from the lands of the Eskimos to the
South Sea Islands, from Africa to New Zealand. His
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of
Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects,6 which is
illustrated with hundreds of photographs, was first
published in 1939.
Dr Price took the whole world as his laboratory. His
devastating conclusion, recorded in horrifying detail in
area after area, was simple. People who live under
so-called backward primitive conditions had excellent teeth
and wonderful general health. They ate natural, unrefined
food from their own locale. As soon as refined, sugared
foods were imported as a result of contact with
"civilisation", physical degeneration began in a way that
was definitely observable within a single generation.
Any credibility the sugar pushers have is based on our
ignorance of works like that of Dr Price. Sugar
manufacturers keep trying, hoping and contributing generous
research grants to colleges and universities; but the
research laboratories never come up with anything solid the
manufacturers can use. Invariably, the research results are
bad news.
"Let us go to the ignorant savage, consider his way of
eating and be wise," Harvard professor Ernest Hooten said
in Apes, Men, and Morons.7 "Let us cease pretending that
toothbrushes and toothpaste are any more important than
shoe brushes and shoe polish. It is store food that has
given us store teeth."
When the researchers bite the hands that feed them, and the
news gets out, it's embarrassing all around. In 1958, Time
magazine reported that a Harvard biochemist and his
assistants had worked with myriads of mice for more than
ten years, bankrolled by the Sugar Research Foundation,
Inc. to the tune of $57,000, to find out how sugar causes
dental cavities and how to prevent this. It took them ten
years to discover that there was no way to prevent sugar
causing dental decay. When the researchers reported their
findings in the Dental Association Journal, their source of
money dried up. The Sugar Research Foundation withdrew its
support.
The more that the scientists disappointed them, the more
the sugar pushers had to rely on the ad men.
SUCROSE: "PURE" ENERGY AT A PRICE
When calories became the big thing in the 1920s, and
everybody was learning to count them, the sugar pushers
turned up with a new pitch. They boasted there were 2,500
calories in a pound of sugar. A little over a quarter-pound
of sugar would produce 20 per cent of the total daily
quota.
"If you could buy all your food energy as cheaply as you
buy calories in sugar," they told us, "your board bill for
the year would be very low. If sugar were seven cents a
pound, it would cost less than $35 for a whole year."
A very inexpensive way to kill yourself.
"Of course, we don't live on any such unbalanced diet,"
they admitted later. "But that figure serves to point out
how inexpensive sugar is as an energy-building food. What
was once a luxury only a privileged few could enjoy is now
a food for the poorest of people."
Later, the sugar pushers advertised that sugar was
chemically pure, topping Ivory soap in that department,
being 99.9 per cent pure against Ivory's vaunted 99.44 per
cent. "No food of our everyday diet is purer," we were
assured.
What was meant by purity, besides the unarguable fact that
all vitamins, minerals, salts, fibres and proteins had been
removed in the refining process? Well, the sugar pushers
came up with a new slant on purity.
"You don't have to sort it like beans, wash it like rice.
Every grain is like every other. No waste attends its use.
No useless bones like in meat, no grounds like coffee."
"Pure" is a favourite adjective of the sugar pushers
because it means one thing to the chemists and another
thing to the ordinary mortals. When honey is labelled pure,
this means that it is in its natural state (stolen directly
from the bees who made it), with no adulteration with
sucrose to stretch it and no harmful chemical residues
which may have been sprayed on the flowers. It does not
mean that the honey is free from minerals like iodine,
iron, calcium, phosphorus or multiple vitamins. So
effective is the purification process which sugar cane and
beets undergo in the refineries that sugar ends up as
chemically pure as the morphine or the heroin a chemist has
on the laboratory shelves. What nutritional virtue this
abstract chemical purity represents, the sugar pushers
never tell us.
Beginning with World War I, the sugar pushers coated their
propaganda with a preparedness pitch. "Dietitians have
known the high food value of sugar for a long time," said
an industry tract of the 1920s. "But it took World War I to
bring this home. The energy-building power of sugar reaches
the muscles in minutes and it was of value to soldiers as a
ration given them just before an attack was launched." The
sugar pushers have been harping on the energy-building
power of sucrose for years because it contains nothing
else. Caloric energy and habit-forming taste: that's what
sucrose has, and nothing else.
All other foods contain energy plus. All foods contain some
nutrients in the way of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins
or minerals, or all of these. Sucrose contains caloric
energy, period.
The "quick" energy claim the sugar pushers talk about,
which drives reluctant doughboys over the top and drives
children up the wall, is based on the fact that refined
sucrose is not digested in the mouth or the stomach but
passes directly to the lower intestines and thence to the
bloodstream. The extra speed with which sucrose enters the
bloodstream does more harm than good.
Much of the public confusion about refined sugar is
compounded by language. Sugars are classified by chemists
as "carbohydrates". This manufactured word means "a
substance containing carbon with oxygen and hydrogen". If
chemists want to use these hermetic terms in their
laboratories when they talk to one another, fine. The use
of the word "carbohydrate" outside the
laboratory-especially in food labelling and advertising
lingo-to describe both natural, complete cereal grains
(which have been a principal food of mankind for thousands
of years) and man-refined sugar (which is a manufactured
drug and principal poison of mankind for only a few hundred
years) is demonstrably wicked. This kind of confusion makes
possible the flimflam practised by sugar pushers to
confound anxious mothers into thinking kiddies need sugar
to survive.
In 1973, the Sugar Information Foundation placed full-page
advertisements in national magazines. Actually, the ads
were disguised retractions they were forced to make in a
strategic retreat after a lengthy tussle with the Federal
Trade Commission over an earlier ad campaign claiming that
a little shot of sugar before meals would "curb" your
appetite. "You need carbohydrates. And it so happens that
sugar is the best-tasting carbohydrate." You might as well
say everybody needs liquids every day. It so happens that
many people find champagne is the best-tasting liquid. How
long would the Women's Christian Temperance Union let the
liquor lobby get away with that one?
The use of the word "carbohydrate" to describe sugar is
deliberately misleading. Since the improved labelling of
nutritional properties was required on packages and cans,
refined carbohydrates like sugar are lumped together with
those carbohydrates which may or may not be refined. The
several types of carbohydrates are added together for an
overall carbohydrate total. Thus, the effect of the label
is to hide the sugar content from the unwary buyer.
Chemists add to the confusion by using the word "sugar" to
describe an entire group of substances that are similar but
not identical.
Glucose is a sugar found usually with other sugars, in
fruits and vegetables. It is a key material in the
metabolism of all plants and animals. Many of our principal
foods are converted into glucose in our bodies. Glucose is
always present in our bloodstream, and it is often called
"blood sugar".
Dextrose, also called "corn sugar", is derived
synthetically from starch. Fructose is fruit sugar. Maltose
is malt sugar. Lactose is milk sugar. Sucrose is refined
sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beet.
Glucose has always been an essential element in the human
bloodstream. Sucrose addiction is something new in the
history of the human animal. To use the word "sugar" to
describe two substances which are far from being identical,
which have different chemical structures and which affect
the body in profoundly different ways compounds confusion.
It makes possible more flimflam from the sugar pushers who
tell us how important sugar is as an essential component of
the human body, how it is oxidised to produce energy, how
it is metabolised to produce warmth, and so on. They're
talking about glucose, of course, which is manufactured in
our bodies. However, one is led to believe that the
manufacturers are talking about the sucrose which is made
in their refineries. When the word "sugar" can mean the
glucose in your blood as well as the sucrose in your
Coca-Cola, it's great for the sugar pushers but it's rough
on everybody else.
People have been bamboozled into thinking of their bodies
the way they think of their cheque accounts. If they
suspect they have low blood sugar, they are programmed to
snack on vending machine candies and sodas in order to
raise their blood sugar level. Actually, this is the worst
thing to do. The level of glucose in their blood is apt to
be low because they are addicted to sucrose. People who
kick sucrose addiction and stay off sucrose find that the
glucose level of their blood returns to normal and stays
there.
Since the late 1960s, millions of Americans have returned
to natural food. A new type of store, the natural food
store, has encouraged many to become dropouts from the
supermarket. Natural food can be instrumental in restoring
health. Many people, therefore, have come to equate the
word "natural" with "healthy". So the sugar pushers have
begun to pervert the word "natural" in order to mislead the
public.
"Made from natural ingredients", the television
sugar-pushers tell us about product after product. The word
"from" is not accented on television. It should be. Even
refined sugar is made from natural ingredients. There is
nothing new about that. The natural ingredients are cane
and beets. But that four-letter word "from" hardly suggests
that 90 per cent of the cane and beet have been removed.
Heroin, too, could be advertised as being made from natural
ingredients. The opium poppy is as natural as the sugar
beet. It's what man does with it that tells the story.
If you want to avoid sugar in the supermarket, there is
only one sure way. Don't buy anything unless it says on the
label prominently, in plain English: "No sugar added". Use
of the word "carbohydrate" as a "scientific" word for sugar
has become a standard defence strategy with sugar pushers
and many of their medical apologists. It's their security
blanket.
CORRECT FOOD COMBINING
Whether it's sugared cereal or pastry and black coffee for
breakfast, whether it's hamburgers and Coca-Cola for lunch
or the full "gourmet" dinner in the evening, chemically the
average American diet is a formula that guarantees bubble,
bubble, stomach trouble.
Unless you've taken too much insulin and, in a state of
insulin shock, need sugar as an antidote, hardly anyone
ever has cause to take sugar alone. Humans need sugar as
much as they need the nicotine in tobacco. Crave it is one
thing-need it is another. From the days of the Persian
Empire to our own, sugar has usually been used to hop up
the flavour of other food and drink, as an ingredient in
the kitchen or as a condiment at the table. Let us leave
aside for the moment the known effect of sugar (long-term
and short-term) on the entire system and concentrate on the
effect of sugar taken in combination with other daily
foods.
When Grandma warned that sugared cookies before meals "will
spoil your supper", she knew what she was talking about.
Her explanation might not have satisfied a chemist but, as
with many traditional axioms from the Mosaic law on kosher
food and separation in the kitchen, such rules are based on
years of trial and error and are apt to be right on the
button. Most modern research in combining food is a
laboured discovery of the things Grandma took for granted.
Any diet or regimen undertaken for the single purpose of
losing weight is dangerous, by definition. Obesity is
talked about and treated as a disease in 20th-century
America. Obesity is not a disease. It is only a symptom, a
sign, a warning that your body is out of order. Dieting to
lose weight is as silly and dangerous as taking aspirin to
relieve a headache before you know the reason for the
headache. Getting rid of a symptom is like turning off an
alarm. It leaves the basic cause untouched.
Any diet or regimen undertaken with any objective short of
restoration of total health of your body is dangerous. Many
overweight people are undernourished. (Dr H. Curtis Wood
stresses this point in his 1971 book, Overfed But
Undernourished.) Eating less can aggravate this condition,
unless one is concerned with the quality of the food
instead of just its quantity.
Many people-doctors included-assume that if weight is lost,
fat is lost. This is not necessarily so. Any diet which
lumps all carbohydrates together is dangerous. Any diet
which does not consider the quality of carbohydrates and
makes the crucial life-and-death distinction between
natural, unrefined carbohydrates like whole grains and
vegetables and man-refined carbohydrates like sugar and
white flour is dangerous. Any diet which includes refined
sugar and white flour, no matter what "scientific" name is
applied to them, is dangerous.
Kicking sugar and white flour and substituting whole
grains, vegetables and natural fruits in season, is the
core of any sensible natural regimen. Changing the quality
of your carbohydrates can change the quality of your health
and life. If you eat natural food of good quality, quantity
tends to take care of itself. Nobody is going to eat a
half-dozen sugar beets or a whole case of sugar cane. Even
if they do, it will be less dangerous than a few ounces of
sugar.
Sugar of all kinds-natural sugars, such as those in honey
and fruit (fructose), as well as the refined white stuff
(sucrose)-tends to arrest the secretion of gastric juices
and have an inhibiting effect on the stomach's natural
ability to move. Sugars are not digested in the mouth, like
cereals, or in the stomach, like animal flesh. When taken
alone, they pass quickly through the stomach into the small
intestine. When sugars are eaten with other foods-perhaps
meat and bread in a sandwich-they are held up in the
stomach for a while. The sugar in the bread and the Coke
sit there with the hamburger and the bun waiting for them
to be digested. While the stomach is working on the animal
protein and the refined starch in the bread, the addition
of the sugar practically guarantees rapid acid fermentation
under the conditions of warmth and moisture existing in the
stomach.
One lump of sugar in your coffee after a sandwich is enough
to turn your stomach into a fermenter. One soda with a
hamburger is enough to turn your stomach into a still.
Sugar on cereal-whether you buy it already sugared in a box
or add it yourself-almost guarantees acid fermentation.
Since the beginning of time, natural laws were observed, in
both senses of that word, when it came to eating foods in
combination. Birds have been observed eating insects at one
period in the day and seeds at another. Other animals tend
to eat one food at a time. Flesh-eating animals take their
protein raw and straight.
In the Orient, it is traditional to eat yang before yin.
Miso soup (fermented soybean protein, yang) for breakfast;
raw fish (more yang protein) at the beginning of the meal;
afterwards comes the rice (which is less yang than the miso
and fish); and then the vegetables which are yin. If you
ever eat with a traditional Japanese family and you violate
this order, the Orientals (if your friends) will correct
you courteously but firmly.
The law observed by Orthodox Jews prohibits many
combinations at the same meal, especially flesh and dairy
products. Special utensils for the dairy meal and different
utensils for the flesh meal reinforce that taboo at the
food's source in the kitchen.
Man learned very early in the game what improper
combinations of food could do to the human system. When he
got a stomach ache from combining raw fruit with grain, or
honey with porridge, he didn't reach for an antacid tablet.
He learned not to eat that way. When gluttony and excess
became widespread, religious codes and commandments were
invoked against it. Gluttony is a capital sin in most
religions; but there are no specific religious warnings or
commandments against refined sugar because sugar abuse-like
drug abuse-did not appear on the world scene until
centuries after holy books had gone to press.
"Why must we accept as normal what we find in a race of
sick and weakened human beings?" Dr Herbert M. Shelton
asks. "Must we always take it for granted that the present
eating practices of civilized men are normal?... Foul
stools, loose stools, impacted stools, pebbly stools, much
foul gas, colitis, haemorrhoids, bleeding with stools, the
need for toilet paper are swept into the orbit of the
normal."8
When starches and complex sugars (like those in honey and
fruits) are digested, they are broken down into simple
sugars called "monosaccharides", which are usable
substances-nutriments. When starches and sugars are taken
together and undergo fermentation, they are broken down
into carbon dioxide, acetic acid, alcohol and water. With
the exception of the water, all these are unusable
substances-poisons.
When proteins are digested, they are broken down into amino
acids, which are usable substances-nutriments. When
proteins are taken with sugar, they putrefy; they are
broken down into a variety of ptomaines and leucomaines,
which are nonusable substances-poisons.
Enzymic digestion of foods prepares them for use by our
body. Bacterial decomposition makes them unfit for use by
our body. The first process gives us nutriments; the second
gives us poisons.
Much that passes for modern nutrition is obsessed with a
mania for quantitative counting. The body is treated like a
cheque account. Deposit calories (like dollars) and
withdraw energy. Deposit proteins, carbohydrates, fats,
vitamins and minerals-balanced quantitatively-and the
result, theoretically, is a healthy body. People qualify as
healthy today if they can crawl out of bed, get to the
office and sign in. If they can't make it, call the doctor
to qualify for sick pay, hospitalisation, rest
cure-anything from a day's pay without working to an
artificial kidney, courtesy of the taxpayers.
But what doth it profit someone if the theoretically
required calories and nutrients are consumed daily, yet
this random eat-on-the-run, snack-time collection of foods
ferments and putrefies in the digestive tract? What good is
it if the body is fed protein, only to have it putrefy in
the gastrointestinal canal? Carbohydrates that ferment in
the digestive tract are converted into alcohol and acetic
acid, not digestible monosaccharides.
"To derive sustenance from foods eaten, they must be
digested," Shelton warned years ago. "They must not rot."
Sure, the body can get rid of poisons through the urine and
the pores; the amount of poisons in the urine is taken as
an index to what's going on in the intestine. The body does
establish a tolerance for these poisons, just as it adjusts
gradually to an intake of heroin. But, says Shelton, "the
discomfort from accumulation of gas, the bad breath, and
foul and unpleasant odors are as undesirable as are the
poisons".9
SUGAR AND MENTAL HEALTH
In the Dark Ages, troubled souls were rarely locked up for
going off their rocker. Such confinement began in the Age
of Enlightenment, after sugar made the transition from
apothecary's prescription to candymaker's confection. "The
great confinement of the insane", as one historian calls
it,10 began in the late 17th century, after sugar
consumption in Britain had zoomed in 200 years from a pinch
or two in a barrel of beer, here and there, to more than
two million pounds per year. By that time, physicians in
London had begun to observe and record terminal physical
signs and symptoms of the "sugar blues".
Meanwhile, when sugar eaters did not manifest obvious
terminal physical symptoms and the physicians were
professionally bewildered, patients were no longer
pronounced bewitched, but mad, insane, emotionally
disturbed. Laziness, fatigue, debauchery, parental
displeasure-any one problem was sufficient cause for people
under twenty-five to be locked up in the first Parisian
mental hospitals. All it took to be incarcerated was a
complaint from parents, relatives or the omnipotent parish
priest. Wet nurses with their babies, pregnant youngsters,
retarded or defective children, senior citizens,
paralytics, epileptics, prostitutes or raving
lunatics-anyone wanted off the streets and out of sight was
put away. The mental hospital succeeded witch-hunting and
heresy-hounding as a more enlightened and humane method of
social control. The physician and priest handled the dirty
work of street sweeping in return for royal favours.
Initially, when the General Hospital was established in
Paris by royal decree, one per cent of the city's
population was locked up. From that time until the 20
century, as the consumption of sugar went up and
up-especially in the cities-so did the number of people who
were put away in the General Hospital. Three hundred years
later, the "emotionally disturbed" can be turned into
walking automatons, their brains controlled with
psychoactive drugs.
Today, pioneers of orthomolecular psychiatry, such as Dr
Abram Hoffer, Dr Allan Cott, Dr A. Cherkin as well as Dr
Linus Pauling, have confirmed that mental illness is a myth
and that emotional disturbance can be merely the first
symptom of the obvious inability of the human system to
handle the stress of sugar dependency.
In Orthomolecular Psychiatry, Dr Pauling writes: "The
functioning of the brain and nervous tissue is more
sensitively dependent on the rate of chemical reactions
than the functioning of other organs and tissues. I believe
that mental disease is for the most part caused by abnormal
reaction rates, as determined by genetic constitution and
diet, and by abnormal molecular concentrations of essential
substances... Selection of food (and drugs) in a world that
is undergoing rapid scientific and technological change may
often be far from the best."11
In Megavitamin B3 Therapy for Schizophrenia, Dr Abram
Hoffer notes: "Patients are also advised to follow a good
nutritional program with restriction of sucrose and
sucrose-rich foods."12
Clinical research with hyperactive and psychotic children,
as well as those with brain injuries and learning
disabilities, has shown:
"An abnormally high family history of diabetes-that is,
parents and grandparents who cannot handle sugar; an
abnormally high incidence of low blood glucose, or
functional hypoglycemia in the children themselves, which
indicates that their systems cannot handle sugar;
dependence on a high level of sugar in the diets of the
very children who cannot handle it.
"Inquiry into the dietary history of patients diagnosed as
schizophrenic reveals the diet of their choice is rich in
sweets, candy, cakes, coffee, caffeinated beverages, and
foods prepared with sugar. These foods, which stimulate the
adrenals, should be eliminated or severely restricted."13
The avant-garde of modern medicine has rediscovered what
the lowly sorceress learned long ago through painstaking
study of nature.
"In more than twenty years of psychiatric work," writes Dr
Thomas Szasz, "I have never known a clinical psychologist
to report, on the basis of a projective test, that the
subject is a normal, mentally healthy person. While some
witches may have survived dunking, no 'madman' survives
psychological testing...there is no behavior or person that
a modern psychiatrist cannot plausibly diagnose as abnormal
or ill."14
So it was in the 17th century. Once the doctor or the
exorcist had been called in, he was under pressure to do
something. When he tried and failed, the poor patient had
to be put away. It is often said that surgeons bury their
mistakes. Physicians and psychiatrists put them away; lock
'em up.
In the 1940s, Dr John Tintera rediscovered the vital
importance of the endocrine system, especially the adrenal
glands, in "pathological mentation"-or "brain boggling". In
200 cases under treatment for hypoadrenocorticism (the lack
of adequate adrenal cortical hormone production or
imbalance among these hormones), he discovered that the
chief complaints of his patients were often similar to
those found in persons whose systems were unable to handle
sugar: fatigue, nervousness, depression, apprehension,
craving for sweets, inability to handle alcohol, inability
to concentrate, allergies, low blood pressure. Sugar blues!
Dr Tintera finally insisted that all his patients submit to
a four-hour glucose tolerance test (GTT) to find out
whether or not they could handle sugar. The results were so
startling that the laboratories double-checked their
techniques, then apologised for what they believed to be
incorrect readings. What mystified them was the low, flat
curves derived from disturbed, early adolescents. This
laboratory procedure had been previously carried out only
for patients with physical findings presumptive of
diabetes.
Dorland's definition of schizophrenia (Bleuler's dementia
praecox) includes the phrase, "often recognized during or
shortly after adolescence", and further, in reference to
hebephrenia and catatonia, "coming on soon after the onset
of puberty".
These conditions might seem to arise or become aggravated
at puberty, but probing into the patient's past will
frequently reveal indications which were present at birth,
during the first year of life, and through the preschool
and grammar school years. Each of these periods has its own
characteristic clinical picture. This picture becomes more
marked at pubescence and often causes school officials to
complain of juvenile delinquency or underachievement.
A glucose tolerance test at any of these periods could
alert parents and physicians and could save innumerable
hours and small fortunes spent in looking into the child's
psyche and home environment for maladjustments of
questionable significance in the emotional development of
the average child.
The negativism, hyperactivity and obstinate resentment of
discipline are absolute indications for at least the
minimum laboratory tests: urinalysis, complete bloodcount,
PBI determination, and the five-hour glucose tolerance
test. A GTT can be performed on a young child by the
micro-method without undue trauma to the patient. As a
matter of fact, I have been urging that these four tests be
routine for all patients, even before a history or physical
examination is undertaken.
In almost all discussions on drug addiction, alcoholism and
schizophrenia, it is claimed that there is no definite
constitutional type that falls prey to these afflictions.
Almost universally, the statement is made that all of these
individuals are emotionally immature. It has long been our
goal to persuade every physician, whether oriented toward
psychiatry, genetics or physiology, to recognise that one
type of endocrine individual is involved in the majority of
these cases: the hypoadrenocortic.15
Tintera published several epochal medical papers. Over and
over, he emphasised that improvement, alleviation,
palliation or cure was "dependent upon the restoration of
the normal function of the total organism". His first
prescribed item of treatment was diet. Over and over again,
he said that "the importance of diet cannot be
overemphasised". He laid out a sweeping permanent
injunction against sugar in all forms and guises.
While Egas Moniz of Portugal was receiving a Nobel Prize
for devising the lobotomy operation for the treatment of
schizophrenia, Tintera's reward was to be harassment and
hounding by the pundits of organised medicine. While
Tintera's sweeping implication of sugar as a cause of what
was called "schizophrenia" could be confined to medical
journals, he was let alone, ignored. He could be
tolerated-if he stayed in his assigned territory,
endocrinology. Even when he suggested that alcoholism was
related to adrenals that had been whipped by sugar abuse,
they let him alone; because the medicos had decided there
was nothing in alcoholism for them except aggravation, they
were satisfied to abandon it to Alcoholics Anonymous.
However, when Tintera dared to suggest in a magazine of
general circulation that "it is ridiculous to talk of kinds
of allergies when there is only one kind, which is adrenal
glands impaired...by sugar", he could no longer be ignored.
The allergists had a great racket going for themselves.
Allergic souls had been entertaining each other for years
with tall tales of exotic allergies-everything from horse
feathers to lobster tails. Along comes someone who says
none of this matters: take them off sugar, and keep them
off it.
Perhaps Tintera's untimely death in 1969 at the age of
fifty-seven made it easier for the medical profession to
accept discoveries that had once seemed as far out as the
simple oriental medical thesis of genetics and diet, yin
and yang. Today, doctors all over the world are repeating
what Tintera announced years ago: nobody, but nobody,
should ever be allowed to begin what is called "psychiatric
treatment", anyplace, anywhere, unless and until they have
had a glucose tolerance test to discover if they can handle
sugar.
So-called preventive medicine goes further and suggests
that since we only think we can handle sugar because we
initially have strong adrenals, why wait until they give us
signs and signals that they're worn out? Take the load off
now by eliminating sugar in all forms and guises, starting
with that soda pop you have in your hand.
The mind truly boggles when one glances over what passes
for medical history. Through the centuries, troubled souls
have been barbecued for bewitchment, exorcised for
possession, locked up for insanity, tortured for
masturbatory madness, psychiatrised for psychosis,
lobotomised for schizophrenia. How many patients would have
listened if the local healer had told them that the only
thing ailing them was sugar blues?
Endnotes:
1. Martin, William Coda, "When is a Food a Food-and When a
Poison?", Michigan Organic News, March 1957, p. 3.
2. ibid.
3. McCollum, Elmer Verner, A History of Nutrition: The
Sequence of Ideas in Nutritional Investigation, Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston, 1957, p. 87.
4. op. cit., p. 88.
5. op. cit., p. 86.
6. Price, Weston A., Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A
Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects,
The American Academy of Applied Nutrition, California,
1939, 1948.
7. Hooton, Ernest A., Apes, Men, and Morons, Putnam, New
York, 1937.
8. Shelton, H. M., Food Combining Made Easy, Shelton Health
School, Texas, 1951, p. 32.
9. op. cit., p. 34.
10. Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization: A History
of Insanity in the Age of Reason, translated by R. Howard,
Pantheon, New York, 1965.
11. Pauling, Linus, "Orthomolecular Psychiatry", Science,
vol. 160, April 19, 1968, pp. 265-271.
12. Hoffer, Abram, "Megavitamin B3 Therapy for
Schizophrenia", Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal,
vol. 16, 1971, p. 500.
13. Cott, Allan, "Orthomolecular Approach to the Treatment
of Learning Disabilities", synopsis of reprint article
issued by the Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research, New
York.
14. Szasz, Thomas S., The Manufacture of Madness: A
Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health
Movement, Harper & Row, New York, 1970.
15. Tintera, John W., Hypoadrenocorticism, Adrenal
Metabolic Research Society of the Hypoglycemia Foundation,
Inc., Mt Vernon, New York, 1969.
Editor's Note:
This article is extracted and edited from the book, Sugar
Blues, © 1975 by William Dufty; specifically, the chapters
"In Sugar We Trust", "Dead Dogs and Englishmen" and "What
the Specialists Say". The book was first published by the
Chilton Book Company, Padnor, PA, USA. Warner Books, Inc.,
NY, published an edition in 1976 and reissued it in April
1993.
The book is currently published by Warner (USA) as a
paperback. Ask for it at your local bookstore, or order it
online.
Apology: We had previously reported the author as deceased,
but after hearing from him recently ourselves, we decided
he isn't. :)
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