Sugar Blamed For Heart Disease

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30513, 7 August 1964, Page 10

Sugar Blamed For Heart Disease

Heart conditions have often been blamed on a high consumption of fats, but sugar is much more likely to be responsible, says Professor J. Yudkin, of the University of London, in the “Lancet.”

A person who takes too much sugar usually does so in an amount equal to what he or she takes in tea or coffee, Professor Yudkin says.

The blame has been put on fats because studies of fat consumption in large populations have revealed a high correlation between fat consumption and heart diseases. But, in fact, there is a close one-to-one relation between the consumption of fats In a community and the sugar consumption in the same community, so that the correlation could equally well be between sugar and heart disease, says the professor.

| This would explain, he thinks, the dilemma that faced investigators who failed to correlate heart disease with a high fat diet in individuals as distinct from populations. Diabetes The same thing has happened with efforts to associate fat uptake with diabetes meilitus, Professor Yudkin says. He thinks there is a strong association between diabetes and a high sugar diet. He finds a highly significant correlation (in statistical terms) between the preWorld War II sugar diets of populations and the number of deaths from diabetes in these populations 20 years later. Peptic ulcer is another complaint which is probably closely related to sugar consumption, he believes. In an article in the same issue of the “Lancet” which Professor Yudkin wrote in

collaboration with Janet Roddy, a dietitian, the authors describe an investigation into the diets of individual patients who have had a recent first heart attack (myocardial infarction) or peripheral arterial disease, compared with the diets of an apparently healthy group of people of similar background. More Sugar The patients with heart or arterial trouble, they report, consumed significantly more sugar than the “control” group. Much of the additional sugar taken by those with heart or arterial troubles was taken in cups of tea or coffee.

“We should say that people who take a lot of sugar—for example in their tea or coffee —are far more likely to have a heart attack than those who take little,” they add.

The group which had suffered from a recent first heart attack had an average sugar intake in tea or coffee of 100 grams a day, while those with arterial troubles had an average intake of 85 grams a day.

The control group—which included, presumably, a number of persons who might be moving towards heart or arterial disease —had an average sugar intake of 47 grams a day.