Pirate flags or poison warnings? The Wood Shop, Rock-a-Nore, Hastings
I'm in danger of getting a tad obsessed about all this food-labelling business. After the prunes episode mentioned in my previous post, I've been looking at the packets of virtually everything I buy, and am increasingly horrified by the degree of processing in what appear to be quite simple foodstuffs. Sugar is a prime culprit - added even to some garlic and coriander naan bread I bought the other day.
I'd read in the past that excess sugar in the diet is a major contributory factor to those scourges of our modern society, obesity and diabetes. I'd thought it was a case of fizzy drinks and sweets. I've as sweet a tooth as the next person, but these aren't really a problem, and my weight seems fairly constant, so I hadn't looked at it further. Until, that is, I read an article in the Guardian about the American molecular biologist and biogerontologist Cynthia Kenyon. Ms Kenyon had discovered, in experiments with rats, that addition of sugar to the diet shortened their lives. This is because it triggered or accelerated the activity of an ageing gene.
The main point of the article was the possibility of ageing being a process that we shall at some future point be able to control through genetic manipulation. The consequences of this for society are so enormous that I can hardly imagine how we shall cope. But the lesser point - and one which I absorbed as rapidly as a sugar cube - is that avoiding sugar is likely to prolong our lives. Conversely, the addition of sugar to processed foods will bring death closer. Ms. Kenyon removed it from her diet immediately. Which is why I'm wondering whether the skull and crossbones should be put on packets of the sweet stuff.
Antony Mair
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