08/03/2026
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12 Forgotten Books That Warned Us About Sugar Before 1970. A century of doctors questioning sugar, flour, and refined carbohydrates...
There is a strange moment that happens when you start digging through old medical books.
You expect outdated ideas.
What you sometimes find instead are warnings that sound incredibly modern.
Long before the obesity epidemic.
Long before metabolic syndrome had a name.
Long before the modern low-carb movement.
Doctors and researchers were already questioning sugar, flour, and refined carbohydrates.
Here are 12 books that raised the alarm long before 1970.
1863
William Banting
Letter on Corpulence
One of the first popular diet books. Banting lost weight by eliminating sugar, bread, beer, and potatoes.
1888
James Henry Salisbury
The Relation of Alimentation and Disease
Promoted a meat-centered diet and warned that starches could damage digestion.
1889
Nathaniel Edward Yorke-Davies
Foods for the Fat
Advised reducing flour foods and sugar. One of his famous patients was President William Howard Taft.
1939
Eustace Chesser
Slimming for the Million
Recommended bacon, eggs, meat, and vegetables while avoiding sugar “like the devil.”
1928
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Not by Bread Alone
Documented Arctic cultures thriving almost entirely on animal foods.
1958
Richard Mackarness
Eat Fat and Grow Slim
Argued that obesity was driven by carbohydrates rather than overeating.
1961
Herman Taller
Calories Don’t Count
Claimed carbohydrates were the real cause of weight gain.
1962
Blake Donaldson
Strong Medicine
Used meat-based diets to treat obesity and metabolic disease.
1964
Robert Cameron
The Drinking Man’s Diet
A low-carb approach that became a cultural phenomenon in the 1960s.
1972
John Yudkin
Pure, White and Deadly
Warned that sugar was a major cause of heart disease and metabolic illness.
1972
Robert Atkins
Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution
Brought the low-carb idea back into mainstream conversation.
1975
Walter Voegtlin
The Stone Age Diet
Proposed that humans are biologically adapted to a diet rich in animal foods.
Different countries.
Different decades.
Different doctors.
Yet the same question kept appearing.
What if the problem wasn’t fat…
but sugar and refined carbohydrates?
History has a funny habit of repeating itself.
Sometimes the warnings were there all along.
Mike Collins
The SugarFreeMan