Sugar Consumption and Chronic Disease: A Brief History of the CardioRenal Epidemic
One-third of adults in the US are obese. One-third of adults in the US have hypertension. A little under 10% have diabetes. It wasn't always like this. Not till the very recent past . And I am talking about the early 1900s. What happened to you America? Sugar may be a big part of the answer to the above question (if not the complete answer). In huge amounts. Cheap and omnipresent. To understand the effects of sugar consumption on health and kidney disease, lets take an interesting detour in to the history of sugar consumption. Once one understands how sugar's (over)use has grown in parallel with the increasing incidences of heart and kidney disease, diabetes, etc since the eighteenth century, the link between sugar consumption and adverse health consequences becomes clearer.