THE SUGAR CONSPIRACY
Zoe Moore
Summary
This article was written by Ian Leslie, a common writer for the Guardian, famous for his article, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on it. He is mostly known for his articles and blogs on topics related to politics, psychology and culture. The Guardian is an online news source that covers both American and international topics. During the article he sites works from Robert Lusting, a clinical pediatrics professor at the University of California, John Yedkin, a famous British physiologist and nutritionist, Ancel Keys, a scientist whom studied the influence of diet on health, and Nina Teicholz, a journalist most famous for her book, “The Big Fat Surprise”. It was published on April 7th, 2016. The article focuses on the once overlooked dangers of sugar in the diet and how it is a leading cause of obesity internationally. Scientists such as John Yedkin have tried to bring this issue to the forefront but were overlooked. Nutrition Scientists in the 20th century put more emphasis on fat and cholesterol being the leading causes of obesity in the diet.
Critique
The author of this article, Ian Leslie, does not seem to have the credentials to take on a topic such as this due to his experience in the subject of nutrition being so little. Although he is a popular blogger, he has more experience in writing articles about persuasive topics rather than informative essays. However, he was able to find valid evidence from works of nutrition scientists such as “Pure, White and Deadly” by John Yudkin and “Sugar: the bitter truth” by Robert Lustig. The first book was written in the 1950’s when majority of dietitians didn’t think sugar was deadly. They focused more on fat and high cholesterol levels being the cause of heart disease. As a result, they overlooked him and neglected the dangers that sugar could cause to the body. The second book is a more updated version of the “Pure, White and Deadly”, but was written in 2009. Therefore, even though the two source are almost identically, one was taken as more credible because it had more scientific evidence to support its theories. His information is based off scientific evidence such as when he takes a look at postwar obesity rates. To further address his point, Leslie uses statistics such as, “In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aero plane. Just 12% of Americans were obese in 1950, 15% in 1980, 35% by 2000” (Leslie). Although this may be valid information, he fails to include the source in which he sited this information. He also starts of the article with grammatical and spelling errors such as writing “paediatrics” instead of pediatrics which shows his lack of writing in professional informative articles.