Even leaving aside sugar's part in diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay, and altogether denying its agency in gout, heart disease, and hypertension, the sugar industry would still have a lot to answer for. For example, consider the historical links to the slave trade. From the 15th to the 19th century, 12·5 million Africans were chained and transported to the Americas, two-thirds of whom were put to work in sugar plantations. “If nothing else, the intimate relationship between slavery and sugar would demonstrate what atrocities our ancestors were willing to tolerate for the sake of their sweet tooth”, points out science journalist Gary Taubes, early in The Case Against Sugar. It was sugar that caused the US cigarette industry to flare into life, after producers realised that dousing tobacco in a sugary solution rendered it far easier to inhale. “The marriage of tobacco and sugar made possible both the astounding success of American cigarettes worldwide and the lung cancer epidemics that followed”, writes Taubes.