Sugar, The New Tobacco

~ from Dr. Ron Cherubino ~

The year was 1944. World War II was raging and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The average price of a new automobile was $1200 and over 200,000 automobiles were registered in the United States. An average family income was $2600 per year with a minimum wage of 30¢ per hour. The price of a loaf of bread was 10¢ as was the cost of a package of cigarettes. 300 billion cigarettes were produced that year.

If you were to ask the average American in 1944, if cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, the answer would have been a definitive no! It wasn’t until 1952 that the American Cancer Society declared a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. In 1965 Congress made it mandatory for cigarette manufacturers to include a warning label on every package of cigarettes sold in the United States.
I can still remember the disbelief, resistance and anger from both the general public and the scientific community in regard to this health hazard declaration. In the end, the connection between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was undeniable and since that time, study after study has confirmed this.
I find it most interesting to remember that there has always been a connection between tobacco use and cancer. Even in the absence of public acceptance and a lack of proof through scientific research, tobacco and cancer have always gone hand in hand.
Sugar Blues is a book by William Dufty that was released in 1975 declaring that sugar was an addictive substance that was harmful to the human body. People scoffed, the author was called all sorts of names, industry rose up to laugh at the concept and people in the United States and around the world continued to consume refined sugar at alarming rates.

Follow this link for the complete text of this article which includes information on a recent UCLA study on the harmful effects of processed sugars – “Can Sugar Make You Stupid?“, as well as useful information on healthy sugar substitutes.