Is sugar toxic? Gary Taubes in the NYT Magazine

 Would it be too much to ask that people like Taubes, and Lustig, and even you, John, stop using language like "toxic" and "evil" when they describe a food that's been eaten for centuries by billions of people, most of whom lived their full measure of years? Of course if you eat too much sugar, you'll gain weight. Of course if you gain weight, you will have related health problems. But maybe, just maybe, you can eat sugar in moderate amounts throughout your life and live to be 88 years old, like pretty much everyone in my family has done for generations? This alarmist language is off-putting to reasonable people. When I hear these gurus start throwing around terms like "poison" to describe cupcakes, I put up my blast shields and move in another direction. For centuries, we've enjoyed a slice of birthday cake from time to time without collapsing on the floor afterward.  (Maybe the couch. Not the same thing.) The key is keeping it in the "from time to time" column of your intake, not "every goddamn day."I reserve my respect for people like Mark Bittman, and even Michael Pollan, irritating as he may be, who point out the problem isn't just what we eat, but how much of it, and point to the million factors that entwine and push us into Fat City -- portion sizes, restaurants, feedlot cattle, cars, suburban life, ignorance of simple cooking skills, on and on and on. I'm older than you, and I remember when my mother bought Coke at the grocery store. It was only an occasional purchase -- maybe one week out of four. She bought a single six-pack of 12-ounce bottles. We were expected to open a bottle, pour ourselves a small glass and close the bottle with a plastic doohickey we kept in the kitchen drawers. One bottle would serve two, or three. Contrast that with today's mothers, who buy a 12-pack a week for a family of four. Look at how much Coke you get in a "small" at Wendy's. The problem with paleo, for me, is, it's just not particularly interesting to eat. I like to cook, but by the fourth morning of bacon and eggs, I'm thinking some toast would be nice. Maybe some black beans in with the scrambled. Verboten in your menu. But as we discussed in our conversation last fall, if it works for you, keep doing it. You probably eat better than 90 percent of most twentysomething bachelors in America. That doesn't mean potatoes are the enemy. Just too many potatoes. In the meantime, I'm calling for a truce in this sort of accusatory language. Worrying about what someone else puts in their mouth strikes me as only marginally more interesting than examining what comes out the other end.

" If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them."I am a Type II diabetic and have had all these ailments.  Despite all the people pushing low-fat diets at me, I realized that's how I got diabetes, so I went low-carb, and now:- my blood sugar has normalized- my enlarged heart has gone back to its regular size- my blood pressure is normal- I am now cancer free 

That's weird, I read that article this morning and it was on my to do list to send it to you, John.  Looks like you beat me to it!