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Nutritionists have found it in themselves to blame our chronic ills on virtually any element of the diet or environment – on fats and cholesterol, on protein and meat, on gluten and glycoproteins, growth hormones and oestrogens and antibiotics, on the absence of fibre, vitamins and minerals, and surely on the presence of salt, on processed foods in general, on over-consumption and sedentary behaviour – before they'll concede that it's even possible that sugar has played a unique role in any way other than merely getting us all to eat too damn much. And so, when a few informed authorities over the years did indeed risk their credibility by suggesting sugar was to blame, their words had little effect on the beliefs of their colleagues or on the eating habits of a population that had come to rely on sugar and sweets as the rewards for the sufferings of daily life.
营养学家发现，他们自己就把我们的慢性疾病归咎于几乎任何饮食或环境因素——脂肪和胆固醇、蛋白质和肉类、谷蛋白和糖蛋白、生长激素和雌激素和抗生素、纤维、维生素和矿物质的缺乏、当然还有盐、加工食品、过度消费和久坐行为——在他们承认“除了吃得太多，糖还可能以某种方式发挥着独特的作用”之前。因此，多年来，当一些知情的权威人士冒着可信度的风险提出糖是罪魁祸首时，他们的话对他们同事的信念，或对那些依赖糖和糖果作为生活中痛苦的回报的人们来说几乎没有影响，他们不会改变自己的饮食习惯。
So how do we establish a safe level of sugar consumption? In 1986, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that most experts considered sugar safe. And when the relevant research communities settled on caloric imbalance as the cause of obesity and saturated fat as the dietary cause of heart disease, the clinical trials necessary to begin to answer this question were never pursued.
那么我们如何确定一个安全的糖摄入量呢？1986年，美国食品和药物管理局(FDA)得出结论，大多数专家认为糖是安全的。当相关研究团体将热量不平衡确定为肥胖的原因，将饱和脂肪确定为心脏病的饮食原因时，他们从未进行过可以解开这一问题的临床试验。
The traditional response to the how-little-is-too-much question is that we should eat sugar in moderation – not eat too much of it. But we only know we're consuming too much when we're getting fatter or manifesting other symptoms of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
对于“多少才算多”这个问题，通常的回答是我们吃糖应适量，不能吃太多。但只有当我们变胖或者出现胰岛素抵抗和代谢综合征的其他症状时，我们才知道自己的糖摄入量多了。
Insulin resistance is the fundamental defect present in type 2 diabetes, and perhaps obesity too. Those who are obese and diabetic also tend to be hypertensive; they have a higher risk of heart disease, cancer and strokes, and possibly dementia and even Alzheimer's as well. If sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are the cause of obesity, diabetes and insulin resistance, then they're also the most likely dietary trigger of these other diseases. Put simply: without these sugars in our diets, the cluster of related illnesses would be far less common than it is today.
胰岛素抵抗是2型糖尿病的基本缺陷，可能还有肥胖。肥胖和糖尿病患者也有可能患上高血压，他们患心脏病、癌症和中风的风险更高，还可能患痴呆甚至阿尔茨海默病。如果糖和高果糖玉米糖浆是肥胖、糖尿病和胰岛素抵抗的致因，那么它们也最有可能是这些其他疾病的饮食触发器。简而言之：如果我们的饮食中没有这些糖，相关疾病群就不会像今天这样常见。
