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
Bear in mind that sugar is one of the cheapest preservatives available. Buy a food that’s shelf-stable at room temperature? It’s probably loaded with sugar, fat and salt (all of which serve the preservation function). They don’t have to taste sickly sweet as they are usually balanced out with acid (think Coke).
TL DR : It’s not that we add too much sugar ourselves to our food, it’s omnipresent in processed foods in vast quantities.
Explanation for a 5yr old: it isn’t that cane sugar is always bad. It’s the amount of cane sugar, or other sugars, that can be bad. Eating a little cane sugar won’t give you diabetes or cause Type 1 to give you problems, but a lot and often can.
Sugar was quite a valued commodity centuries ago. Like peppercorns, people could actually pay rent and debts with sugar if they had some. That was how highly valued it was.
Then it became more common, more and more people could afford it, its usage went up. Higher sugar intakes increases the risk of diabetes
I can only speak for the UK. But for 10 years in the 40s, sugar was heavily rationed due to the war. When sugar was taken off the ration list. People overloaded on sugar as they missed the taste. Meaning an an entire generation grew up with sugar in pretty much everything. You can see cases of diabetes skyrocket in that generation
For diabetes you need a fatty liver, not just sugar overconsumption. If you’re active, it’s hard to get a fatty liver until later in your life, and the biggest cause was alcohol overconsumption
Sugar companies paid scientists and politicians to push the fat is bad narrative. So, food companies started creating low fat foods with a ton of sugar instead.
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