Everyone agrees that something must be done to tackle the obesity plague. High on the list of planned government interventions is the imposition of a hefty tax on sweetened foods and drinks. In America, a powerful medical lobby is pressing for a 40 per cent tax on all shop-sold cola drinks. It's believed that this single act would reduce the average per capita energy consumption by 1,200 calories a day, which is equivalent to a loss of just over three pounds of surplus body fat a week. This is a tempting move for politicians to make, for the tax would raise tax revenues by an estimated $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion) a year. The development of refined sugar has been one of the most destructive revolutions in human culinary history. Today a sixth of our calorie consumption is provided by sugar, which when it was first imported from the West Indies was as expensive as caviar, and so was kept like tea in locked caddies. Now we eat as much sugar in a fortnight as our forebears ate in a year two hundred years ago. Today it's among the cheapest, and most appealing, forms of quickly absorbed energy. Most animals are tempted to overindulge if they're given sugary foods. If rats are supplied with food which is bland but highly nutritious they'll eat just enough to balance their energy requirements; but they'll overeat and put on weight if they're given chocolates and biscuits. Horses, bears and ants show the same predilection, and likewise human babies, who from the moment they enter the world can be made to smile by giving them something sweet to eat.Food manufacturers take advantage of this inherent passion and make sure that their junk foods are loaded with sugars and fat. One frequently recommended way of losing weight is to stop eating all foods that are advertised on television, since these are invariably heavily laden with sugar. Researchers claim that anyone who limited themselves to eating only foods which were advertised in the media would consume more than 25 times the recommended daily allowance of sugar. By doing so, today's jam doughnut becomes tomorrow's middle aged spread. Instead of eating hyper-palatable cookies, candies and cakes we should stick to eating natural foods. These provide a wide range of essential nutrients and are slower to digest, which makes it far easier for the body to decide when it's had enough.
This was the discovery of William Banting, the nineteenth century undertaker, who made a fortune selling elaborate coffins to the Duke of Wellington and other members of the London gentry. In 1862, at the age of 65, Banting weighed 202lb, which was clearly excessive for a man who was only 5ft. 5inches tall. Over the years he'd tried a wide variety of slimming regimes, ranging from fasting to spa treatments, dieting and strict exercise regimes. All failed. When his health finally plummeted, probably because he'd developed Type 2 diabetes, he consulted Dr William Harvey who was then one of Europe's most eminent physicians. Harvey put him on a low sugar diet, and a year later he was 46 pounds lighter, and was losing at a rate of roughly a pound a month. He'd lost twelve inches around his waist, was sleeping better, and could go up and down stairs with ease. Such was his miraculous transformation that he wrote Letter on Corpulence (1863), which was the world's first diet book. In it he said: 'I can confidently state that the quantity of diet may be safely left to the natural appetite, it is quality only which is essential to abate corpulence.' Reduce your intake of sugar as much as possible, and you too can gain the same results.
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