In a lengthy article, Gary Taubes, a Robert Woods Johnson Foundation independent investigator, discusses in the New York Times (4/17, MM47, Taubes, Subscription Publication) claims made by pediatric hormone disorder specialist and childhood obesity expert Robert Lustig, MD, of the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, who makes a “persuasive case…that sugar is a ‘toxin’ or a ‘poison,'” including high-fructose corn syrup. Should Lustig prove to be right, then Americans’ “excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years,” and the sweet substance “is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension, and many common cancers among them.”
