My grandfather, born in the later 1800's, and who died at around aged 96 or thereabouts, ate heaps of white sugar all his life. At the same time, almost everything else he consumed was home grown and unprocessed.

There is a danger of singling out one thing and then trotting out all the correlations it has been shown to have with various bad events. The implication is that if we just stop consuming all sugar, these evils will go away. This kind of simplistic thinking is a minefield. In a world that also contains lots of prescribed medications, plastics exposed to the sun (e.g. car dashboards), X rays, microwave exposure, foods that have been raised with pesticides and hormones, etc etc etc...to just narrow it down to sugar as the principal demon is stupid. There is rarely ONE cause for anything that happens. Many people live to ripe old ages happily consuming cakes and candies in moderation.

We here choose to not consume these things because we have insulin and weight issues. Some people can't eat gluten either, or foods that trigger gout...

I am not trying to advocate for sugar...far from it..I am saying lets not go off the deep end looking for the ONE cause. We humans should, for the most part, be able to eat small amounts of sugar. Bears, also omnivores like us, manage to eat the occasional feast of honey and berries, harvested with a fair amount of effort, and live out their bear lives without all the threats suggested in this article. It is our tendency to eat profligately of these over-available treats that brings problems.

Val