Sugar

 https://theconversation.com/babies-born-under-sugar-rationing-grew-into-adults-with-lower-cancer-risk-289873

Refined sugar is a major bane of modern civilization.

Yes. And I think the interesting part of that article is that it strengthens the case for your statement in a way that is rather more profound than simply “sugar makes you fat.”

The British sugar-rationing experiment is unusually valuable because it approximates a natural experiment. The rationing ended abruptly in 1953, allowing researchers to compare people who had experienced different amounts of sugar restriction during gestation and their first two years. In the 2026 study, those exposed to rationing for the full early period had about a 34% lower risk of developing cancer by age 50 than those who weren't exposed.

And there is a particularly intriguing wrinkle: the effect wasn't confined to one cancer associated with obesity or some particular dietary pattern. The researchers found reductions across solid tumors. An earlier related study found substantial reductions in several individual cancers—liver, rectal, lung, prostate and breast.

I would, however, distinguish sugar itself from refined sugar as we consume it today. A piece of fruit containing sucrose isn't nutritionally equivalent to a soft drink or a sweetened processed food. The latter delivers sugar rapidly, with little fiber or nutritional bulk, and makes it extraordinarily easy to consume quantities that would have been difficult to obtain from whole foods.

What really strikes me is the possibility that modern society has created an environment in which sweetness is unnaturally cheap and ubiquitous. Sugar isn't merely an ingredient anymore. It is in bread, sauces, breakfast cereals, drinks, desserts, processed foods—the food industry has essentially learned how to make the reward system do its marketing for it.

And this new research hints at something even more interesting: early exposure may program later preference. The researchers found that people who experienced rationing as infants subsequently consumed less sugar decades later. If that holds up, then we're not merely talking about restricting today's sugar intake; we're talking about whether childhood sugar exposure helps establish the adult appetite for it.

There is also corroborating evidence from the same British rationing episode: a 2025 BMJ study found that greater exposure to sugar rationing during the first 1,000 days was associated with better cardiovascular outcomes decades later.

So I think your phrase “bane of modern civilization” is defensible, with one qualification: refined sugar probably isn't the great dietary villain so much as an exceptionally effective component of the modern ultra-processed-food environment.

The historical irony is delicious, though. Quite literally: Britain accidentally conducted one of the world's largest experiments in telling children, “No, you can't have another sweet,” and then followed them for seventy years. The results are beginning to suggest that Mother may have been onto something.

Because of earlier but now controlled pre-diabetes, I add sugar to nothing and buy products without the various names for sugar on the label.  I don't find my self deprived.

That is actually one of the more encouraging things about changing one's diet: once the taste threshold changes, the absence of sugar stops feeling like deprivation.

And your approach of looking beyond the word “sugar” is sensible. Added sugars can appear as things like glucose syrup, fructose, sucrose, maltose, dextrose, corn syrup, rice syrup, and various concentrated fruit syrups. A product can therefore advertise itself as something other than “sugary” while still delivering essentially the same metabolic commodity.

There's also an important distinction between avoiding added sugar and trying to eliminate every gram of carbohydrate. You can eat vegetables, tofu, dairy, grains, or whole fruit without treating naturally occurring sugars as equivalent to a spoonful of table sugar. The former come packaged with varying amounts of fiber, protein, micronutrients, and physical bulk.

What I find particularly interesting in what you say is “I don't find myself deprived.” That's probably the sustainable sweet spot. If you had to spend every day grimly resisting cake, cookies, and sweet drinks, I'd expect the diet to become a miserable contest of willpower. But if you've simply established “I don't buy things with added sugar and I don't put sugar in things”, then there's nothing to resist.

And there's a nice connection to the British rationing study: perhaps one reason childhood sugar exposure matters is that sweetness itself becomes normalized as an expected part of eating. Remove that expectation, and ordinary food can become perfectly satisfactory without it.

In other words, you've managed to turn “I am denying myself sugar” into “Why would I put sugar in this?” That's a much easier rule to live by.

Well I

You were saying…? 😄

Well, I'm careful about fruits for a different reason, I take a potassium protecting diuretic.

Ah, yes—that's a different issue entirely. Potassium becomes the relevant variable, not sugar.

A potassium-sparing diuretic can reduce the kidneys' excretion of potassium, so unusually large amounts of high-potassium foods can potentially push blood potassium too high. Fruits such as bananas, oranges, dried fruit, melons, and avocados can contribute substantially.

That doesn't mean fruit is inherently off-limits; it means your fruit choices and quantities make more sense in the context of your potassium blood tests and the particular diuretic you're taking. And potassium isn't only in fruit—vegetables, beans, potatoes, dairy, and several other foods can contribute too.

So you've actually got two quite separate dietary rules operating:

Added sugar: you avoid it because you don't see any benefit and don't miss it.

High-potassium foods: you moderate them because your medication changes how your body handles potassium.

Those are quite different reasons for being selective about food.