If cane sugar is the worst “natural” sweetener, why was diabetes so rare before the sudden increase of diabetes in the 20th century?

Question

I know around the middle of the 20th century vegetable oils, synthetic sweetener became a thing. But statistic wise doesn’t make sense, even if before it caused tooth problems, but not diabetes.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Sugar was very inaccessible to most people before the industrialisation of agriculture. It was rare and expensive and only the rich could afford it. So much so that in Tudor times in England supposedly people coloured their teeth black to pretend they can afford such luxuries (read: bad teeth were a sign of wealth).

The problems started when sugar became so cheap that it was put into basically anything – even food that we don’t perceive as “sweet” (like eg. Ketchup).