Sugar
The Maori people are a strong, sea-fairing people. They are among the largest and most powerful linemen in American football, and the fiercest of international rugby players. They have jawlines like mountain ridges, and beaming smiles. Seemingly indestructible. Prior to European settlement in the early 1900s, there was no history of cavities, not a single cavity in the elders or in skulls. When Western engagement left hundreds of Maori children without parents, they were brought to London orphanages. Within one year the children had rampant dental decay. A few years later a public health official noticed, and removed processed sugary foods from the diet. The new children who proceeded to pour in never got cavities. That was 1913. For over 100 years we’ve known sugar causes disease.
Watching Fed Up this morning reminded me of the erupting side effects of the industrialized processing of plants into refined sugar. It reminded me of the power of warning signs. It reminded me that the mouth is the portal to the body. How could we as a culture believe that the single nutrient known to destroy the hardest biologically made material, our teeth, would not harm the rest of the body?
Sugar is the cause of the disease that I fight. It is the cause of the metabolic disease that has swept our nation and our children over the past 40 years, and is now sweeping the globe – wherever our food system is adopted. As a pediatric dentist, I have the privilege of working with families on this problem, informing loving, caring parents of unintended consequences. It is hard, telling a family that the juice they made from their apple tree has the same amount of sugar as a Coke – I’ve had apple trees, and the juice is so much more delectable than the fruit. Is once in a while okay? Where is the limit? How often is okay for an alcoholic to have a gin?
It is odd to me that my colleagues who directly fight obesity in children, such as Robert Lustig, point to effects on the teeth to motivate behavior change, while I point to the gut, and the insulin needle, the dialysis bags, and the heart attacks, to motivate change.
I believe that this will be the century of behavior change, the century of the population grabbing control of their lives. As last century, for us doctors and scientists, was the century of the randomized clinical trial that finally enabled asking medical questions, I believe that in this 21st century a technology will come that will empower people to live as they intend. Part of that is overcoming addiction. 12 step programs make a pretty good run at overcoming addiction, and we can do much better. The sugar epidemic is nothing short of an addiction. It surpasses a personal addiction, additionally having addicted American culture. Sugar products are everywhere. Everywhere has turned into dispensaries of this drug – gas stations, toy stores, corner stores, schools. I believe that we will figure out in the next couple decades how to move this devastating drug into balance. Through this bountiful age of information we will overcome the lobbies and the marketing to rectify the health of our children – and perhaps save a few teeth along the way.