were marginalised or
attacked as unscientific.
A cardiologist,
Robert Atkins, who,
along with several other
groups of researchers, had successfully
treated his cardiac and
obese patients with
a low sugar/low carbohydrate diet, was
venomously attacked;
in the Senate Select
Committee on Nutrition
and Human Need in April
1973, Senator Charles
Percy of Illinois went
on record, on behalf of
Fred Stare, a nutritionist at Harvard, saying:
“The Atkins diet is nonsense...the author who
makes the assertion
is guilty of malpractice”. Thus the theory that refined sugars
may be a major cause
of metabolic illness
(which has a long and
illustrious history), was
suppressed, and it is
only now, in the second
decade of the 21st century that this view has
resurfaced. The period
since the Senate hearing saw the inclusion
of sugars in processed
foods at the expense of
fats, and the incidence
of obesity/diabetes and
dementias exploded.
Gestational Diabetes
Is it possible to refer
to a condition of foetal
dementia? Gestational
diabetes, a growing
problem, is a condition
in pregnancy where
the mother develops a form of type 2
diabetes in the third
trimester.
The foetal circulation is then
38
subject to a combination of hyperglycaemia
and hyperinsulinism.
At birth the infants are
often large (macrosomic) and they are at
increased risk of obesity/diabetes and metabolic syndrome.