This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features an unusual story by Gary Taubes, whom some of you might remember as the author of the controversial story in the Times in 2002 touting the virtues of a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
That story appeared under the headling, “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” The headline on the web version of this Sunday’s story is equally direct: “Is Sugar Toxic?” (The magazine’s cover language is “Sweet and Vicious: The case against sugar.”)
The answer to both questions, as Taubes himself says repeatedly, is that we don’t know. In neither case is the evidence conclusive enough to make the case one way or the other. But that doesn’t stop Taubes from taking strong positions and arguing his case forcefully, even if, ultimately, he can’t prove it.
Such controversies make for good stories, and reporters who do them well try to weigh the evidence, to convey the differing points of view, and to try, when possible, to come to some conclusion. It’s not always easy, when the evidence is uncertain, but sometimes it’s enough to say which way the evidence is leaning, or when and whether the controversy might be resolved, or what additional pieces of the puzzle might emerge from current or future studies.
That’s not the approach Taubes takes. His piece is more an essay than a reported story. While it’s evident that he did a lot of reporting before writing this story, he uses few quotes and doesn’t try to present an even-handed appraisal of the current state of affairs. Instead, he marshalls evidence to support a case. This is an essay intended to persuade.
In both stories, Taubes adopted the contrarian view. Low fat diets are a big fat lie, and low carbohydrate diets are better, he argued in the first story. And sugar is toxic, he argues in this Sunday’s story.
The 2002 story prompted considerable debate. This is how I was quoted in an article in the American Journalism Review a few months later:
Paul Raeburn, a senior writer at BusinessWeek and president of the National Association of Science Writers, credits Taubes with exploring an emerging viewpoint in the nutrition field–a valuable endeavor for a science writer. But Raeburn objects to Taubes’ presentation. Although Taubes acknowledges at the outset that he’s writing about the views of a small but growing minority, Raeburn says Taubes should have emphasized throughout the article that he was advancing an unproved viewpoint and that many studies support the other side.
“I do think that Gary Taubes’ piece was misleading,” says Raeburn, who covers science, medicine and the environment. He notes that the cover art and the story’s opening anecdote suggest that people can eat as much fat as they want. “Not many people believe you can eat all the fat you want, and people quoted in the article didn’t make that case,” Raeburn says. “If you just look at the article, you might think that.”
I feel the same way about the article that will appear Sunday. Taubes will likely persuade many readers to abandon sugar, or to try to. (We can guess that the resolve of some of them will weaken by the middle of the week, when somebody brings donuts into the office.) And that might not do a lot of harm; if it makes them slimmer, all the better.
But encouraging readers to make radical shifts in their diets might be unwise. Taubes can’t make the case that sugar is toxic, though he says he believes it. And I can’t make the case that his article will be damaging to the public’s health, although I worry about that. Taubes’s editors should have worried about that, too.
Most of the piece makes an argument that excessive consumption of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup can lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. (He talks about sugar for quite a while before telling us that it’s fructose he’s worried about, not glucose; table sugar is made of both.) That link is plausible, even if one doesn’t agree that, in the view of one researcher Taubes paraphrases, “sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.”
But toward the end of the piece, Taubes raises an even more controversial question: Does sugar cause cancer?
If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they [some researchers] say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly.
I’ve met Taubes, and I like him. He’s smart, and he’s a good writer. But he’s not the person I would turn to for advice on whether sugar causes cancer.
There might be a reason why this question of sugar and cancer hasn’t often been voiced publicly. Maybe it’s because the sugar industry has muzzled the nation’s researchers. Or maybe it’s because people who know don’t think they can make the case–and that they shouldn’t yet try.
Ordinarily, I trust the reporting in the Times. In this case, I don’t know what to think, or what to believe. I can’t be sure that Taubes gave me the straight story, because he has such strong personal views–and because he’s trying to persuade me, not enlighten me. That, in my view, is a missed opportunity. This is important stuff; I would have liked more help.
– Paul Raeburn
Leave a Reply