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.
50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
61–70 of 86 posts
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Just eat a balanced diet based upon non processed food and do so in moderation. But our notion of a balanced diet is wrong, which is the whole point of this. Who knows what a balanced diet really is now?
Is it? Lots of fruits and vegetables every day. Some nuts a few days a week. Red meat once or twice a week, poultry meat and eggs for the rest of the week. Add in things like olive/avocado oil, spices, vinegar, yogurt. Drink water, tea/coffee, milk. Rarely rice, pasta, potatoes. How could you go wrong with that ? That's basically my diet.
This is often false. Many people following this way of eating are still sick, weak, and often skinny fat.
I was one of them. Of course this is going to be better than a McDonald diet, but it does a terrible job at fixing problems for people with any kind of metabolic problems.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#63[2016] 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. Per the article, it sounds like maybe 1. There actually is published research linking sugar to heart health 2. The sugar lobby paid $50k for a single review study that omitted/downplayed 1 and emphasized other papers relate…
One of the things they did, was have an Oxford professor (maybe Cambridge) hounded out of the university because his research consistently showed that sugar was the problem and not fat.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#64[2016] 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. Per the article, it sounds like maybe 1. There actually is published research linking sugar to heart health 2. The sugar lobby paid $50k for a single review study that omitted/downplayed 1 and emphasized other papers relate…
> what did they do in the rest of the 50 years? There's a bit at the end about Coca Cola and candy companies continuing to manipulate research. I assume it's been a constant battle, not just a one-time $50k expenditure. But, it must have been worth the money for the sugar producers. >Do journalists only look at review papers? ... Public discourse also completely ignored sugar, somehow. It definitely did not ignore su…
Up until a couple of years ago, Coca Cola was a high end sponsor for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. AND shapes standards and guidelines for Registered Dieticians in the US. While anyone can call themselves a nutritionist, RDs are certified and considered to be the authority for dietary advice.
The sponsor list [1] looks a bit less egregious than before, but it's still loaded with processed crap peddlers, e.g. Mondelez, no doubt trying to sell BelVita crackers as being good for you.
[1] https://www.eatrightpro.org/about-us/advertising-and-sponsor...
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#65Ironically, 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.
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.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#66Ironically, 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. 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.
"Artificial sweeteners are ten times worse than real sugar" source?
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not mutually exclusive. How fructose is metabolized is so well understood at this point it's clearly a major factor in obesity and diabetes. It's the primary cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease AIUI. And it hasn't been removed from the US diet. That's very unlikely to occur until corn subsidies go away. Even once that occurs it'll take awhile for such a huge industry to evolve away from such a mature s…
sugar isn't that much more expensive than corn syrup, so I don't think cancelling subsidies on it would make much difference at all as sugar could replace it 1:1 with very little overall increase in prices of food products.
I don't think it's so simple, HFCS has industrial advantages over sucrose in addition to the subsidies. So if HFCS were made more expensive it's unclear to me if sucrose would even be an acceptable substitute for all the ways HFCS is (ab)used due to its sweetness, stability, and ease of use advantages over sucrose.
They put HFCS in practically everything processed on store shelves because it's so cheap and checks many boxes from preservative to browning agent, and I'm sure myriad other effects I know nothing about.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what did they do in the rest of the 50 years? There's a bit at the end about Coca Cola and candy companies continuing to manipulate research. I assume it's been a constant battle, not just a one-time $50k expenditure. But, it must have been worth the money for the sugar producers. >Do journalists only look at review papers? ... Public discourse also completely ignored sugar, somehow. It definitely did not ignore su…
My recollections from before 2016 re sugar were 1. Calories, so people wanted artificial sweetener to lose weight 2. Diabetes 3. Artificial sweeteners may cause cancer But, like cholesterol coating arteries, these studies I _think_ suggest that sugar is bad beyond the weight gain issue. Like even if you don't gain weight, just replacing other carbs with sugar may have disproportionate health risks. At least, that's m…
I think the very latest I'd put public awareness of the health effects of sugar would be the Atkins diet fad, circa 2004. That diet was a big deal at the time, definitely part of the public discourse, and the premise was that sugar was bad. Note that that book was already 30 years old by then, but something suddenly changed in the culture that made it hit.
Then there were things like Paleo (2002-2013, hard to pin down) and The 4-Hour Body (2010), which were even more explicit about sugar being dangerous.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#69The documentary, “Sugar Coated” details this period, recommended. Was on Kanopy for “free” last I checked.
Re: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Point Blame at Fat (2016)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's processed food! This doesn't mean anything. It's a floating signifier.
There is a group of scientists and policy makers making this rigorous. They are starting to use the label "ultra-processed food" which has a precise definition. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30744710/ Read this article for background on the Brazilian policy and the NIH studies: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/how-ultra-proce... And watch this video by Hall from the NIH, with a 2019 study: ILSI NA: Ultr…
Unless you believe in culinary Cartesian dualism, there must be some physical characteristic in which the effect of the processing is embodied.
The actual issue is almost certainly insufficient granularity in classification of nutrients. For example, treating chemically distinct plant fats as fungible with animal fats. (In fact, that's a serious contender as the single biggest issue behind "processed" food - it's all made using disgusting plant oils.)