Sam Apple
@Sam_Apple1
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Faculty, Johns Hopkins MA in Science Writing, MA in Writing. Books for adults and kids — samapple at gmail dot com #Rockets , #DifferentHere (Jayson Tatum)
Joined August 2014
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Pinned Tweet
I am also proud. It's been such a thrill to work with
@jaytatum0
!
Proud to share “Baby Dunks-a-Lot” cowritten by me &
@Sam_Apple1
. Deuce and I read together all the time, so this is something I’ve loved working on. Hope yall laugh at this one with us 🤣🤣 Pre-order available now, on-sale 8/27
Illustrated by Parker-Nia
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Still can't believe this Associated Press article is from 1931.
(Full story of sugar, insulin, and cancer in Ravenous: )
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A diabetes reversal story from December 10, 1900.
--The Boston Globe
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If you're interested in the sugar-cancer connection, here's an easier way to read the insanely long thread I posted yesterday:
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Pretty remarkable AP article from September 3, 1931. Written before the insulin piece had been figured out, but still strikingly prescient in many respects.
[Ravenous: ]
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Cleveland Clinic now listing keto and intermittent fasting as good options for reversing prediabetes:
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"Dr. Yudkin said the charts that show a correlation between fat intake and heart disease show an even more dramatic and closer connection between sugar and heart trouble." -- UPI, 1966
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🧵1/ The Cancer that Changed European History -- And Gave Rise to the Glucose-Cancer Connection
In this thread, I want to share a fascinating historical episode I discovered while researching Ravenous (just released in paperback ).
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Thread: 1/10 - What are we teaching our kids about nutrition?
I spent the last five years studying nutrition while working on my new book Ravenous (). So I was curious what my son would be taught in the online health class he took for high school credit.
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"Diabetics now given diet high in carbohydrates."
--Remarkable article from July 24, 1983 that helps explain how we got here.
[See Ravenous to learn more: ]
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First modern keto endurance athlete? I stumbled upon this 1907 story about Eddie Root while researching another topic.
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Still seems weird that "insulin resistance" was known as "Syndrome X" back in the '90s.
(Also weird that this had been understood for so long...)
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In England in 1940, butter was considered essential for people with diabetes.
---The Manchester Guardian August 1, 1940.
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“If you look at people with prediabetes, you can see this disease starts long before you develop diabetes ... even if you look at people with normal glucose tolerance, you can show these people are already significantly insulin resistant,” DeFronzo said.
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🧵1/ Four New York Times Articles from 1928 -- and the Haunting Story of The Sugar Institute.
-While researching Ravenous (just released in paperback: ), I came across a New York Times article from April 8, 1928 that led me to some disturbing findings…
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Also pretty cool that the research was carried out by two women at a time when so few women had opportunities in science.
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The century-old article on insulin, diabetes, and sugar that completely nailed it.
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"We know from cell studies, animal studies and some human studies that insulin is a growth hormone, and that it has the same effect on cancer cells. That is, a high level of insulin can make cancer cells grow faster..."
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"Remarkably, as of 2022, most people have still never heard of insulin resistance. This is true even though it is the single most common chronic health condition in the U.S. and a major contributor to six of the top eight causes of death in 2021"
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In my new book, Ravenous (), I discuss the danger of elevated insulin. In this op-ed, I explain why many leading scientists now think that, at the most fundamental level, obesity is a problem of insulin/hormones rather than calories.
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"[R]esearchers did find that tumors use one particular nutrient, glucose, more than normal tissues, and thus aligns with the possibility of combining standard cancer therapies with diets that reduce circulating glucose, like the ketogenic diet."
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This article, which suggests high-carb diets are best for people with diabetes, appeared 40 years ago today. I think it reveals a lot about how we ended up with the metabolic health crises of today.
-More on this topic in Ravenous:
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Just found a 1927 photo of one of the researchers, Gladys E. Woodward, in action.
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Thread: What I learned from a 140-Year-Old Keto Diary
While researching Ravenous — the Kindle version is temporarily on sale for $2.99: — I came across a surprising find in…
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The Washington Post, July 15, 1900: "How to Become Thin"
"[S]ugar and starch must be put aside—the quantity of food eaten is not of importance if the material is of the proper kind."
Low-carb bread in 1900?🤔
See Ravenous for more nutrition history:
👉
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If you're interested in this topic, I hope you'll check out Ravenous:
Check out
@Sam_Apple1
’s excellent new book. I just got my copy and highly recommend it. A new and provocative theory about cancer wrapped in a page-turner history
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One of the more remarkable ketogenic diet stories I've stumbled across -- a kilo of Philadelphia Cream Cheese a week!
#ketodiet
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Intriguing research on keto and migraines in the news ... exactly 91 years ago today.
(As a bonus, there's a strange poem about a coyote pelt. Love old newspapers!)
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September 4, 1931.
The key role of insulin would take decades to grasp, but, in 1931, researchers were already giving advice that is increasingly common today:
"We tell our patients to eat very little food containing sugar and starches."
Learn more:
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Thread-1/10: Why do our Congressional Representatives Want to Give Our Kids Even More Sugar?
In my new book, Ravenous (), I write about the devastating toll sugar takes on our bodies and lives. So, I was upset to learn…
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"The key to containing obesity, and thus the myriad diseases it causes ... is insulin."
--Congrats
@BenBikmanPhD
on this nice profile
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Thread: 1/25: Can sugar be thought of as a cause of cancer? I explore this question in my new book Ravenous: (Pub date is 5/25. If it looks interesting, pre-orders are a huge help!)
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The Associated Press, 100 years ago. "Insulin Not Diabetes Cure. ... Must Control Diet."
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Thread-1/21: Why do so many of us get cancer? Does it have to be this way? Have we overlooked something fundamental?
These questions lie at the heart of my new book Ravenous: . In this thread, I want to explain why I don’t believe it has to be this way.
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Important thread. We're unlikely to ever make real progress in cancer prevention until we focus on insulin resistance.
In our systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that patients with cancer are highly insulin resistant. Strikingly, insulin resistance in patients with cancer was similar to the level of insulin resistance of people with type 2 diabetes
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Much more research needed, but an intriguing finding from University of Virginia researchers: "Patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis who adopted a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet saw significant improvements in their MS..."
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"Insulin can increase the tumor's ability to take up glucose, and glucose is very good for tumor cells-- which makes it very bad for patients."
-- Yale's Dr. Rachel Perry (If you're interested in the insulin-cancer connection, this video is a great intro.)
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Another old paper that pretty much nailed it.
The National Consumption of Carbohydrates in Relation to Disease (1932) -- J.H.P. Paton, MD
You can learn more about sugar, insulin, diabetes, and cancer in Ravenous:
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I've learned so much about metabolic health from
@PeterAttiaMD
over the years. Really had a big influence on my career. Couldn't be more thrilled to have been a guest on his fantastic podcast.
New Podcast
#187
- The Warburg Effect: Otto Warburg’s cancer metabolism theory with
@Sam_Apple1
| Watch/Listen to the full episode today!
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Remarkable 1928 New York Times article decrying an astonishing increase in sugar consumption.
-"Bake-shop windows are gaudy with frosted pastries that resemble nothing mother used to make."
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Thread-1: Did we ever truly have a chance of winning the “war on cancer”?
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act--the launch of the so-called "war on cancer." While writing my new book Ravenous (), I tried to understand why…
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In 1954, Brown researcher Paul F. Fenton not only saw the link between obesity and cancer but also theorized that it could be explained by the hormonal regulation of blood sugar. He didn't have all the details right—it was too early—but it was a remarkable insight for the time.
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📢 Ravenous Giveaway! Retweet To Enter!
In honor of today's paperback release of Ravenous (), I'm giving away an original autograph of Nobel Prize-winner Otto Warburg + a signed copy of the book. (Ends 5/31) Winner selected at random & contacted on Twitter.
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In 1882, Wilhelm Ebstein also recognized the problem of trying to outrun a bad diet.
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Some of the doctors quoted in this June 6, 1925 article in the New York Times sound remarkably like many low-carb doctors today. Headline: "Meat Not Harmful, Doctors are Told"
@tednaiman
@bigfatsurprise
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It's apparently now safe to have one egg a day -- assuming you're otherwise healthy. 🤷♂️
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Glad to see this research is being done.
"Now scientists and clinicians at Cedars-Sinai are exploring whether fasting diets, in conjunction with conventional cancer treatment, can help stall disease progression..."
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At an event for Ravenous, my new book on cancer and diet (), I asked Chi Van Dang, one of the world's leading cancer scientists, for his thoughts on diet and cancer prevention. This is what he told me:👇👇👇
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So disappointing to see Dana-Farber Cancer Institute providing smoothie recipes with 43 grams of sugar per serving.
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The Baltimore Sun, 1923
"Many authorities on diabetes have denied that excessive consumption of sugar is a cause...However, it is a well-known fact that incipient cases...of diabetes are made worse by excessive use of carbohydrate foods." --Dr. William S. McCann, Johns Hopkins
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If anyone is in the mood to watch me squirm with happiness for two minutes, here's a video of Pauline Cox discussing Ravenous: 👇👇👇
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🧵25/ Had Freund saved the crown prince, the 20th century might have looked very different. But by launching the study of glucose and cancer metabolism, he may one day be celebrated for saving more lives than he could have dreamed. (Full story in Ravenous )
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Thread: 10/10 - On a more serious note, if you’re interested in these topics, I hope you’ll check out Ravenous:
Bookshop:
Amazon
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“The day they didn’t have any more liver fat, their blood sugars were normal, they were not insulin resistant, and their diabetes was gone,” Petersen said.
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Thread 25/25: Is anyone still reading this? I'm bad at Twitter. If you found this interesting, pease, um, check out Ravenous: pre-orders =❤️ Thanks!
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"Too Much Sugar" from the NY Daily News, September 2, 1924. Always striking to see how little has changed over the last one hundred years...
@RobertLustigMD
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New York Times, July 7, 1965 -- When low-carb was "The Drinking Man's Diet" and encouraging people to replace carbs with fat and protein was "equivalent to mass murder."
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.
September 4, 1931.
The key role of insulin would take decades to grasp, but, in 1931, researchers were already giving advice that is increasingly common today:
"We tell our patients to eat very little food containing sugar and starches."
Learn more:
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"Diabetes ... is directly tied to America’s dietary dysfunction. The ADA did not cause the problem. Elizabeth Hanna’s whistleblower lawsuit, however, suggests that the organization’s nutritional advice is actually making it worse."
--
@nsbarsky
in The Guardian
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"While the diet alone had no effect on tumor
growth or survival, ketogenic diet with chemotherapy nearly tripled survival."
--Interesting take on how keto enhances chemo in mouse models of pancreatic cancer.
(Further reading: )
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“If you look at people with prediabetes, you can see this disease starts long before you develop diabetes and, in fact, even if you look at people with normal glucose tolerance, you can show these people are already significantly insulin resistant.”
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"I felt like there was something right in front of me that I was missing. And that ended up being insulin resistance."
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Thread: 7/10 - This is another reason why I think that the U.S. Dietary Guidelines matter and need to reflect the most recent science. I wrote about this issue for The New Yorker in 2015:
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Thread: How the American sugar industry convinced us to add sugar to everything...
🧵1/ Four New York Times Articles from 1928 -- and the Haunting Story of The Sugar Institute.
-While researching Ravenous (just released in paperback: ), I came across a New York Times article from April 8, 1928 that led me to some disturbing findings…
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👉"The very enzyme that mediates how insulin works throughout our body is also the most frequently mutated cancer oncogene."-- Lewis Cantley, Director of the Cancer Center at Weill Cornell, via the
@lowcarbusa
podcast.
Take 3 minutes to watch👇👇
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Might need to have my smile surgically removed after seeing these tweets.
Third truly iconic book in low-carb literature. All written by investigative journalists who've done as much for promoting low-carb science as anyone: Good Calories Bad Calories by
@garytaubes
; Big Fat Surprise by
@bigfatsurprise
and now Ravenous by
@Sam_Apple1
. We're blessed
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🧵This certainly isn't the worst version of this article I've seen, but it's really strange that there's no discussion of the difference between glucose and sucrose (table sugar) and no mention of insulin. The core argument of these sorts of articles usually goes like this ..1/
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A lot of harrowing statistics in this important new book by
@garytaubes
. In this passages, Taubes reminds us that diabetes is widespread among lean people as well.
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My latest : How an academic scientist and a "rogue chemist" worked together to arrive at a keto breakthrough
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Thread-23: If we take on the problem of elevated insulin and obesity with the same focus that we took on smoking, a review of the next 50 years of the “war on cancer” will likely tell a much happier story.
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If you found this thread of interest, I hope you’ll check out my book, Ravenous. The Kindle edition is currently on sale for $2.99.
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I recently published this op-ed about two different models of obesity and weight loss--and why it's so important that we figure out which is correct.
👉
This 1952 Times articles is a striking reminder that we've been stuck in the same place for 70 years.
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If you watch only one thing today... it really probably shouldn't be this one-minute video of the great
@RobertLustigMD
discussing Ravenous, my new book on cancer and diet. But I still hope you'll watch it and check out Ravenous:
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The article was published 100 years after this 1883 piece in the The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.
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Thread: 9/10 - I honestly think they were trolling the kids with this one. The bottom one is the correct answer.
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Was just asked why I wrote Ravenous. Thought back to these lines:
"Many different debilitating conditions appear together with insulin resistance. Our numbness to the suffering they cause might, in the end, be the most debilitating condition of all."
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Thread: 3/10 - My son correctly guessed two of the responses they were looking for, but he got the question wrong because he didn't check "The protein serving is too large." [Trying to imagine
@tednaiman
’s face when sees this.]
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Thread: How nutrition was understood in 1885.
What follows are passages from the 1885 edition of Banting in India—a book I came across while researching Ravenous ( )
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🚨 New Science Journalism Fellowship!
The Johns Hopkins Science Writing program and
@GoodSciProject
are awarding $5K reporting grants for articles that reveal flaws in science policy, practice, or funding.
Grateful for RTs and help spreading the word.
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1931 vs. 2023: I don't think either article gets it quite right, but I do think the 1931 story gets closer to the truth. More on the sugar-cancer connection in Ravenous:
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🧵23/ If you found this thread of interest, I hope you’ll check out Ravenous.
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Recognize this NIH scientist? Probably not. It's Jehu Callis Hunter. While researching Ravenous, I discovered he was among the first to connect insulin to cancer. He also kicked Nazi ass in Europe as part of a battalion of Black Americans. More in Ravenous:
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Sometimes cancer is bad luck. You can do everything right and follow a perfect diet, and it won't make a difference. But the historical records suggests that we shouldn't accept today's astronomical cancer rates --and the extraordinary suffering caused by cancer -- as normal. 🧵:
Thread-1/21: Why do so many of us get cancer? Does it have to be this way? Have we overlooked something fundamental?
These questions lie at the heart of my new book Ravenous: . In this thread, I want to explain why I don’t believe it has to be this way.
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P.S. If you're interested in the connections among sugar, insulin, and chronic disease, you can learn more in Ravenous:
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1/ "They found mice who ate a ketogenic diet, rich in fat but low in carbohydrates, were strikingly resistant to developing colorectal tumors."
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A friend spotted a stranger in the airport with a copy of Ravenous and sent me this photo. I was momentarily pleased to see the book making its way into the world. Then I realized it was actually just being used as a coaster... for a cup of Coke!
#thejoyofwriting
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"The circumstances which diminish obesity, and a tendency to the formation of fat , would seem a priori to be opposed to the cancerous tendency."
-From On Cancerous and Cancroid Growths by the celebrated English cancer researcher John Hughes Bennett--published in 1849!
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"Component of keto diet plus immunotherapy may reduce prostate cancer" [In mice]
“It made the tumor become very sensitive to the immunotherapy, with 23 percent of the mice...tumor-free; in the rest, the tumors were shrinking really dramatically.”
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🧵17/ Elevated insulin has been directly linked to many cancers and also drives obesity—which is now linked to 13 common and deadly cancers. Cancer cells tend to be covered in insulin receptors. It's no wonder that scientists often rely on insulin to help grow cancers in the lab.
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🧵14/ In 1937, F. Hoffman, the world authority on cancer statistics, published Cancer and Diet, a massive tome arguing that modern diets were responsible for the rapid rise of cancer in the industrial world. He noted that cancer patients generally had elevated glucose.
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Thread: 6/10 - Meanwhile sugar is often ignored, and our kids are taught that eating grains will help prevent strokes.....
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"To put it bluntly, we are losing the war on diabetes.
And unlike many other diseases – such as certain cancers, Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, or Crohn’s – type 2 diabetes is reversible."
--
Another must-read on diabetes by
@nsbarsky
:
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The Cancer That Changed History -- And Gave Rise to the Glucose-Cancer Connection
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If you found the CBS segment interesting, you can
learn more about the sugar-cancer connection here:
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Sometimes really does feel like a time warp...
New York Times: July 7, 1965:
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Thanks so much, Helena!
Sated, & hungry for more after this gripping read - fascinating, vivid and fresh. Thank you
@Sam_Apple1
#writer
@hubermanlab
👏 sterling
#book
recommendation!
@AuschwitzMuseum
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Thread: 8/10 - In fairness, the health class wasn’t quite up to speed on other issues either. I mean, is this really helpful?
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Some striking passages from an 1884 New York Times article on sugar👇👇👇
"We can mix sugar with anything we like ... [and] give a false palatableness to even the worst and most indigestible rubbish."
Learn more in Ravenous:
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