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Feature Essay

What if sugar is worse than just empty calories? An essay by Gary Taubes

BMJ 2018; 360 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5808 (Published 04 January 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;360:j5808

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Re: What if sugar is worse than just empty calories? An essay by Gary Taubes

I ask as I am ignorant.
Has anyone published any account of frequency - or scantiness - of
1. Diabetes
2. Obesity
3. Dental caries
over the past five or six scores of years in
a. British Guyana, Guyana
b. Surinam
c. Jamaica
d) Trinidad
e) Northern Pakistan area where sugar cane is grown
d) North Western India where sugar cane is grown.
In the areas noted ahove, I guess the farmers and others engaged in the trade of sugar cane did not and may be still do not wait for sugar " sugar, pure, white and deadly" to reach them in packets. They do, perhaps consume sugar cane juice as mood takes them ( squeezed in the jaws, or in an okd-fashioned machine, or use "Shakkar" or "Gur".
Hoping for enlightenment
JK Anand

Competing interests: No competing interests

08 January 2018
JK Anand
Retired doctor
Free spirit
3 Wayford Close, Peterborough