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Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

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Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#151
post #2

This meme is very healthy among MAHA, and Secretary Kennedy is overseeing an overhaul of the Dietary Guidelines, recasting saturated fat as a health food. There is a lot of speculation that we will soon see a new food pyramid that is an inverted version of the last one. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/08/nx... I wonder if it will keep flipping as administrations change. Edit: The new guidelines…

If you do the opposite of whatever Kennedy recommends, you probably wouldn’t be too far off doing the right thing.

Eating nothing but processed foods, sugar, and heavily processed grains? That sounds like the opposite of what Kennedy recommends, which is a recipe for obesity and type 2 diabetes.

He’s got his problems, many of them, but eating real food without a bunch of processing seems like a fairly common sense thing.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#152
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't seem like enough to entirely shape worldwide discourse around nutrition and sugar. People are often surprised when they find out how little people sell out for. The going rate for a member of congress in 2015 was a little less [0] - about $43,000. [0] https://truthout.org/articles/you-too-can-buy-a-congressman/

But buying off a single congressperson is not going to change the worldwide discourse on a topic.

In theory, to change discourse, you just need one expert and a few magazine articles and the rest is history.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#153

A good book that explains it all is The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes, which came out the same year as this article. Like many truths, it's actually well-known and frequently discussed in public, but hard to hear amongst all the noise of corporate messaging and decades of bad dietary 'advice' from both public and private institutions. To paraphrase the Oracle in the Matrix: What's really going to bake your noodle…

Yep. And thanks for the recommendation.

I am currently reading The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#154
post #62

My understanding was that atherosclerotic plaques are comprised of cholesterol or fatty deposits [1] and that these can lead to CVD. The fat mechanism I understand, but what is the mechanism for sugar in CVD? [1] https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/cholesterol/about-cho...

CVD requires a bunch of events to happen in sequence, I always felt like it was a combination of risk factors + luck that make a heart attack or aneurysm happen.

1. High blood pressure damages walls of arteries and veins

2. LDL Cholesterol gets into the damaged walls

3. LDL gets oxidized

4. White blood cells engulf oxidized LDL and form plaques

5. Hardened plaques chill, they are bad but not deadly, if a plaque breaks off you are probably dead.

Sugar is gonna contributes to 1 - 3, especially 3 it seems way more guilty of than fat. The one big thing that opened my eyes was that most of the LDL you get is going to be produced by your own liver. Regulating how the liver produces it is going to have a bigger impact than directly eating less/more of it.

It is kind of a luck thing though, you could eat like shit and never have all the events occur just due to dumb luck, or you could be a fit 45 year old and for whatever reason you get a plaque that breaks off and you aneurysm and die.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#155

This isn't really a correct narrative. Diets high in saturated fat are correlated with CVD. Sugar is also correlated with poor metabolic health which is also correlated with CVD. Both are bad. Best data is still Mediterranean- nuts, fruits vegetables, olive or avocado oil, and lean protein.

Mediterranean diet is basically a lie, though. If you look at the healthiest Mediterranean populations, they eat a lot of saturated fat.

Diets high in saturated fat are correlated with high standard of living. High standard of living is correlated with high consumption of processed foods. So... yeah.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#156

Aren't both sugar and saturated fat problemtic, and complementary in contributing to CVD?

High-fat high-carb diet certainly is. There is however no conclusive data that high-fat low-carb diet OR low-fat high-carb diet contribute to CVD.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#157
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy adults consuming some dietary sugar doesn't cause persistent high blood sugar, though. That's diabetes.

it's not just sugar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Grouping all simple carbs are the devil, but we can't possibly feed billions of people actually healthy food - organic vegetables, nuts, and animal products, so come drink your corn syrup.

The sugar industry (topic of this article) can only be blamed for sugar, though -- not all high-GI foods.

And you can replace "sugar" in what I said earlier with "high-GI foods" and it doesn't change a thing. Persistent high blood sugar is diabetes; it isn't dietary.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#158
post #62

My understanding was that atherosclerotic plaques are comprised of cholesterol or fatty deposits [1] and that these can lead to CVD. The fat mechanism I understand, but what is the mechanism for sugar in CVD? [1] https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/cholesterol/about-cho...

Sugar causes inflammation, and inflammation damages arteries. It is this damage that then leads to accumulation of fatty deposits, as damaged arteries basically lose the protective layer (think of equivalent to a non-stick coating). But that doesn't mean dietary fat is what actually caused the plaque.

Re: Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

#159

Here’s a gift link to a NYT article that was posted a few minutes ago: Kennedy Flips Food Pyramid to Emphasize Red Meat and Whole Milk https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/well/rfk-jr-food-pyramid-...

At the top of the pyramid there are also vegetables. For some reason that is left out in some of the media converge.

Kennedy said to avoid the sugary, processed foods that he labels as poisonous to health. (Does any sane person disagree with this?)

“My message is clear: Eat real food,” Mr. Kennedy said (Does any sane person disagree with this?)

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