Gary Taubes on sugar as the primary dietary problem: recommends

Gary Taubes says sugar — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup — is “the tobacco of the new millennium,” and that reducing sugar is the single most important dietary change a person can make. He develops the argument at book length in The Case Against Sugar and repeats the position across his interviews and lectures.

His stated reasoning: he argues that sugar consumption, which he says now accounts for roughly a fifth of calories in the American diet (a figure he attributes to the researcher John Yudkin’s 1963-era data), drives obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease through its effects on insulin. He frames sugar as uniquely damaging because, in his view, it is both toxic in its metabolic effects and aggressively marketed by an industry he compares to tobacco.

This page reports Taubes’s claims as his position; it is not medical advice, and contested health claims are attributed, not endorsed.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.