In 1873, Ellen White wrote that in her own family, “We have always used a little milk and some sugar. This we have never denounced.” But she also advised against eating too much sugar at a time when it made up a very large portion of the typical American diet. “Far too much sugar is ordinarily used in food,” she wrote.
By the 1860’s, sugar was so popular that it had become the world’s most traded commodity. Along with dairy and meat, it was a staple of the American diet with the average adult consuming 22 pounds each year. By 1900, people consumed 90 pounds per year and by 2012, over half of Americans ate 180 pounds of sugar per person every year. Asking people to limit their sugar intake was very unpopular, yet it would prove to be very good advice.
Today, we know that the risks of eating more than 9 teaspoons of sugar a day (about 30 pounds a year) are high. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, liver failure, weakened immunity and chronic inflammatory conditions can be traced back to diets that are too high in sugary foods and drinks. Scientists didn’t begin to accept this until the 1970’s. By the 1980’s, they began to understand why sugar has such a negative impact on health and it really wasn’t until the early 2000’s that most doctors saw the truth; sugar, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup, acts like a poison in our bodies. Even if your weight is normal, a sugar-laden diet can raise your risk of dying from heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S.
EGW understood these risks a century before we did.