[2016]<p>This news had a big impact on me, but I was wondering how they actually did it. It's like carbon credits, or the snake breeding or whatever, you can't pay people enough to not do something.<p>Per the article, it sounds like maybe<p>1. There actually is published research linking sugar to heart health<p>2. The sugar lobby paid $50k for a single review study that omitted/downplayed 1 and emphasized other papers related to fat and heart health<p>3. Policymakers used this single study to shape policy<p>I'm left with a lot of questions though. The article talks about the sugar lobby doing this for 50 years... what did they do in the rest of the 50 years? And $50k isn't a lot!<p>Do journalists only look at review papers? That doesn't sound right, there's a constant barrage of journalists jumping on a single paper with minor findings and sensationalizing it, I can't believe they'd as a whole completely ignore sugar research. Public discourse also completely ignored sugar, somehow.<p>Did other industries (meat? butter? oil?) not fight back about this?
Though it was annoying to read, Good Calories, Bad Calories [0] by Gary Taubes made it pretty clear bad science, for myriad reasons, poisoned the data informing US policy on nutrition. Blaming fat for all things bad, resulting in the food pyramid with carbs at the foundation.<p>If memory serves one of the main players responsible was Ansel Keys [1], who manipulated/filtered the data of studies backing his fat-is-fattening theories.<p>Elsewhere I heard a plausible claim, I believe it was from Taubes in a talk he gave, that much of this behavior stemmed from post-war anti-german sentiments in the medical and nutrition science communities (which I think were more or less the same group back then). The Germans at the time happened to be at the forefront of nutrition science. When the US joined the war against the nazis, in the scientific domains German papers were apparently often suppressed, as a way to harm those researchers' careers. A side effect was their science, good or not, became blacklisted in a way. The US research, right or wrong, was championed. It was a form of patriotism, and it seems public health has been paying the price ever since.<p>TFA strikes me as a minor footnote in this larger story.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Calories,_Bad_Calories" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Calories,_Bad_Calories</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys#Criticism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys#Criticism</a>
And now, 13 years after Lustig's "Sugar: the Bitter Truth" totally convinced me it was sugar and not fat, and sugar consumption has decreased while obesity has increased, I'm unconvinced it's sugar either. It's some environmental contaminant.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/mold_time/status/1414242490404720648" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/mold_time/status/1414242490404720648</a>
The most critical issue here is not sugar industry, it is the possibility for any big $$$ company to fund researches to mislead people for their interest with little consequences and nobody noticing for long time researches.
How many other policies are applied based on "scientific" studies that are publicly considered sacred and weaponized against those "opposing science".
After decades of monkey to human illustrations in science books, scientist don't really know much to back the theory of cross-species evolution, and nobody is really giving it enough rejection as it has been weaponized for long with the accusition of being "creationists", despite that theory itself is just a belief with very few scientific information to back it.
Anecdote here, worked for me.<p>I’m now 40+, but when I was 28, I had this bad, visible, unsightly eczema on my neck. No dermatologist could prescribe anything to make it go away and I had lived with collared shirts since.<p>I attempted to go on keto diet, fat, proteins, and zero sugar and carbs, twice. Once when the pandemic started, and a second time in Oct 2021. I wanted to lose weight, and to prevent diabetes as a possible future.<p>The first time around, it took a month to get into ketosis as dieting with zero carbs is incredibly hard. Ended up with a rash and had to reintroduce carbs to get rid of the rash after 2 days.<p>The second time was much easier. Paired with exercise, I lost 15lb (155 to 140 can see my 4-pack again) andhadn’t noticed until recently, but my eczema was gone!<p>Since then, I do have 1 or 2 cheat days a week, but my carb and sugar consumption is under 50g on those days. Whenever I eat sugar now, all the sweetness hits me like a truck and I need water.<p>I have no scientific proof, but the experiment on my own body worked for me, and I have a good idea now what happens when I eat “high” carb days vs not.
It is and will always be wrong to focus upon a singel ingrediens in food and blame it for health problems.<p>Just eat a balanced diet based upon non processed food and do so in moderation.
Then move around a bit<p>I had a teacher a long time ago who frequently told us to make sure we ate
Apples or Bananas or whatever it was, now while it was still healthy / good for you.<p>She had observed a lot of twists and turns in what science decided was healthy
or not over her lifetime.<p>All hype and fads that has laser focus on a single issue to avoid or pig out on are unhealthy.<p>I remember having co-workers who were dieting by eating big cubes of (Highly processed) cheese and packets of (highly processed) lunch meat.<p>Just 4 to 5 packages of plastic wrapped pseudo ham and whatever.<p>I dont care what it was called or who endorsed it but there is no way in
hell that was a healthy idea.
The Coke and Pepsi and other drinks arrived to my country during my lifetime. It didn't take much to realize that these syrups over saturated with sugar and gas (more recently caffeine also) are hiv and aids. I don't need your fat-sugar-lifestyle "research" for this. What makes me hate you is that younger generations for whom this toxic waste is taken as granted, they are fat now.
Ironically, sucrose and fructose gained such nasty reputations in the popular zeitgeist that the chemical industry has succeeded in hooking us on one after another extremely harmful substitute, from saccharine to aspartame to stevia, ad nauseam.<p>Artificial sweeteners are ten times worse than real sugar, so don't bother wondering why you're packing on the pounds even as you guzzle 44oz Diet Colas.