beef and pork eaters and their use of butter and eggs was unrestricted. In fact, the two most widely consumed fats of all were lard and beef tallow.
In the crucial sixty-year time span between 1910 and 1970, when coronary heart disease escalated from a yet-to-be-recognized problem to the killer of more than half the population, this is what happened to America ' s diet: The intake of animal fat and butter actually dropped a little, while the intake of cholesterol was not changed. Meanwhile, the intake of refined carbohydrates( mainly sugar, corn syrup and white flour) escalated by sixty percent 68( See the graphs).
To understand how the human diet in most of the world ' s developed countries has changed so drastically in the last century, let ' s take a short historical detour. Even before the onset of agriculture, the human animal was able, for millions of years, to remain strong and healthy in conditions of often savage deprivation by eating the fish and animals that scampered and swam around him, and the fruits and vegetables and berries that grew nearby. Without medicine, without expertise, without insulated housing or reliable heating, our species nonetheless survived. The fact that the dietary side of our primitive lifestyle was enormously healthy undoubtedly helped us.
So what has caused the avalanche of degenerative diseases that now threaten the health of our species? Two hundred years ago the average person ate less than 10 pounds of sugar a year, and white flour was used much less commonly. About a hundred and ten years ago the lid blew off the sugar canister. In the 1890s, the craze for cola beverages swept the nation-which means that when we were thirsty and craved water, we got sugar as well. To make matters worse, the mills that could refine wheat into white, nutritionally barren flour were developed in the same decade. That was bad enough. But what ' s worse, once that flour met up with sweetness and saltiness, the junk food industry was off and running.
The Perils of Sugar
The net result was that sugar intake, which had averaged 12 pounds a year per person in 1828, was nearly ten times that in 1928. Remember, too, that if you don ' t take your sugar straight, you ' ll find it already sprinkled into a thousand different foods and beverages before they come to your table.
There are marked similarities in the diet eaten in all the world ' s developed countries, so, for now, I ' ll just mention some statistics for the United States. Once you understand what healthy eating can be like, you ' ll find them as bizarre and shocking as I do.
The latest Department of Agriculture statistics show that the average American consumed 124 pounds of caloric sweeteners( principally refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup) in 1975. By 1999 it had risen to 158 pounds. This translates into an average of nearly 750 calories from sugar a day, which means by conservative reckoning, over one-third of all the calories an adult puts into his or her body each day comes from nutritionally empty and metabolically harmful caloric sweeteners. Those figures represent 190 grams of sugar( and corn syrup) a day. Compare that with the 300 grams of carbohydrate the government expects us to consume each day, and we see that sugar now comprises over sixty percent of the carbohydrate total.
Sugar has no nutritional value and is directly harmful to your health. Despite vociferous attempts to defend it, there are studies that clearly show how harmful( and even deadly in the case of diabetics) its effects can be. I won ' t go into hyperinsulinism now; it will be covered fully in Chapter 5. For now, simply remember this: Diets high in sugar and other refined
23