Sugar, the delicious White Devil that is in E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G processed and tasty, and is reportedly as addictive as cocaine, apparently entered all of our foods due to suspect Sugar Industry funded research - according to a new article recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2548255

Hi. I'm Jennifer Skyler, fiction writer, nutrition nerd, and former sugar addict.

So, how did the Sugar Industry get away with it? 

They didn't tell anyone they were behind the research, then they threw Fat under the bus. 

As early as the 1950's, it became apparent that diet might be the culprit behind the high morbidity rate of American men from coronary heart disease. Studies commenced, and multiple dietary factors were observed in connection to CHD, like excessive calories, amino acids, fats, vitamins, minerals, cholesterol and phytosterols, in an attempt to discover why so many American men were dying of heart attacks. By the 1960's, two physiologists were offering two very different explanations. John Yudkin believed sugar to be the culprit, while Ancel Keys blamed fat and cholesterol.

As more and more studies began to crop up, demonstrating that there was link between sucrose and heart disease, The Sugar Industry - which had been touting the health benefits of sugar as a healthy form of a carbohydrate since the 1950's - attempted to do damage control and formed the Sugar Research Foundation. The SRF began funding research in 1965 in an attempt to refute the connection between sugar and heart disease, and promote Ancel Key's theory  instead. The research project findings - blaming fat and cholesterol as the culprit behind coronary disease - were published in The New England Journal of Medicine with no mention of who had  financed the research. The Sugar Research Foundation then continued to conduct studies throughout the 60's and 70's, successfully casting doubt on sugar's role in heart disease. 

Guess what happened? 

We believed them. 

Low-fat became the mantra of the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's. Cholesterol was to be feared as a deadly substance - never mind the fact that (according to the World Health Organization) there were many peoples around the world consuming high cholesterol diets with little to no incidence of heart disease. Panicked over the public's perception of the dangers of fat, the food industry did everything they could to strip fat out of the foods they were producing. Lack of fat meant lack of flavor, so to boost taste, the food industry added sugar, which is why the majority of processed foods we purchase today contain sugar. 

It's 2016. We now have an even higher rate of heart disease - one out of every three deaths in America is caused by Cardiovascular Disease, according to the American Heart Association - and we're a nation addicted to the white stuff. 

Well played, Sugar Industry, well played.

With Love From Portland, 

Jennifer Skyler