PhilT wrote: 2. The UK's per head sugar consumption has been approximately static if not declining for 20 if not 30 years. It does not correlate with obesity or with diabetes.
Thought this might be of interest, have no idea how they count sugar consumption in the UK.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/2 ... lia/?_r=3&"In 2011, two leading nutrition and diabetes experts in Australia created controversy when they published a study arguing that at the same time obesity rates soared, the consumption of refined sugar in Australia had appeared to fall substantially. The researchers called this phenomenon “the Australian Paradox,” and it suggested, they argued, that public health messages aimed at sugar intake might not do much to curtail obesity.
But another paper published this month by a group at the University of Western Australia argued that there is no paradox.
...
“Customs data on imports of processed foods show that over the last 20 years there has been rapid and still increasing growth in imports of processed foods, many with high sugar content,” the authors wrote. “Our conservative estimate suggests that at least one-sixth of the sugar in the domestic food supply is now imported into the country in this way.”
Links in article to papers'n'stuff.