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Sugar Industry Bought Off Scientists, Skewed Dietary Guidelines For Decades (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in the 1960s, a sugar industry executive wrote fat checks to a group of Harvard researchers so that they'd downplay the links between sugar and heart disease in a prominent medical journal -- and the researchers did it, according to historical documents reported Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. One of those Harvard researchers went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he set the stage for the federal government's current dietary guidelines. All in all, the corrupted researchers and skewed scientific literature successfully helped draw attention away from the health risks of sweets and shift the blame to solely to fats -- for nearly five decades. The low-fat, high-sugar diets that health experts subsequently encouraged are now seen as a main driver of the current obesity epidemic. The bitter revelations come from archived documents from the Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association), dug up by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Their dive into the old, sour affair highlights both the perils of trusting industry-sponsored research to inform policy and the importance of requiring scientists to disclose conflicts of interest -- something that didn't become the norm until years later. Perhaps most strikingly, it spotlights the concerning power of the sugar industry. In a statement also issued today, the Sugar Association acknowledged that it "should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities." However, the trade-group went on to question the UCSF researchers' motives in digging up the issue and reframing the past events to "conveniently align with the currently trending anti-sugar narrative." The association also chastised the journal for publishing the historical analysis, which it implied was insignificant and sensationalist. "Most concerning is the growing use of headline-baiting articles to trump quality scientific research -- we're disappointed to see a journal of JAMA's stature being drawn into this trend," the association wrote. But scientists disagree with that take. In an accompanying editorial, nutrition professor Marion Nestle of New York University argued that "this 50-year-old incident may seem like ancient history, but it is quite relevant, not least because it answers some questions germane to our current era."
Fortunately for us, this does not seem to be happening in other industries. /s
Ezekiel 23:20
What with the push by the FDA not to eat bacon and eggs in favor of vegetable oils and the creation of millions of diabetics by overloading their systems with sugar it is surprising any of us still live. We were made to eat meat, that is the bottom line.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
High fructose corn syrup even worse. And it's not just fructose and glucose.
That 42/58 and 55/45 is a bulk culinary description, the truth is there is about 3-5 percent saccharide polymers plus leftover reagents (which until very recently even included mercury)
Food for thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is how the system works. Now it's up to us to break it.
[company] or [industry] will liberally shower money on schools, politicians and scientists so they can spread the word of how wonderful their [thing] is.
Break it. Break the goddamned system.
Demand to know where the money for "studies" come from. Then act accordingly.
Demand campaign reform that actually has fangs to bite with.
Does it incense me that Big Sugar has been doing this? Nah. I'm not surprised in the least. This is exactly how America operates. Oh and don't get me started on the corn people, with their HFCS in our drinks and ethanol poisoning our gasoline!
What I am incensed about is the absolute reluctance to question things. The People simply accept what is told to them in schools, churches and media. Ask. Fucking. Why. Every time.
Or, you know, keep doing the same idiotic thing we've been doing for the past 200+ years. It works sooooooo well.. for the rich.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
So, you're trying to tell me that scientists are mere mortals, with human tendencies like the rest of us? That they are not divinely inspired conduits of the Truth, who can solely interpret the cryptic texts of the Journals de Academe?
There are two major things ruining science. First, scientists are revered like priests, and the laypeople do not feel worthy to question them, even though at the end of the day it all boils down to logic and math. Laypeople even beat each other up for speaking out without the proper credentials. Are you less likely to be right about a study if you're a layperson? Of course. But this is still an important check on the system. Second, every clown PhD and pre-PhD who is avoiding the real world needs to publish publish publish in order to advance. This leads to ever more silly and esoteric journals full of silly and esoteric studies that nobody reads and very few can be bothered to try to replicate. And of course you get no credit for replicating a study, because credit = being published. So replication, another important check on the system, is diminished. And within the mainstream subjects, you have ever more pressure to come up with a new result, because there are many more PhDs looking to publish and only so many will. Scientific results, which were already susceptible to human biases, are victim to marketing spin and selective publishing. If nobody will ever try to replicate your results, who cares anyway. And if it's advancing interest in your field, which I'm sure you care about for at least some make-the-world-better reasons, then it's quite easy to convince yourself you're doing a neutral or positive thing.
The scientific method is solid. We just don't follow it anymore. And the #ifuckinglovescience crowd isn't helping.
The sugar industry and food manufacturers have been essentially doping our food with sugar. They put sugar in damned near everything. The only real way to avoid it is to stay far away from processed foods.
I don't disagree with the notion of personal responsibility, but like smoking, when corporate interests put their profits ahead of human wellbeing, and then compound their sins by actively subverting public health and legislative solutions to keep the cash flowing in, I think the penalties should be massive. Quite frankly, in a properly functioning world, there wouldn't be a tobacco company left in the Western world, and their boards, senior management and their researchers would be rotting in jail cells.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The whole point of the pseudo skeptic movements, whether they been anti-AGW, tobacco company "research", sugar industry "research" and the like isn't really to convince people that their dangerous products are safe, but rather to create just enough doubt so that people will continue their existing habits. It doesn't have to convince people the legitimate researchers are out and out wrong, it just has to create enough uncertainty to prevent people from wholesale change.
Every year the sugar industry is pushing far more sugar into Westerners' digestive tracts than is safe, and every year the oil industry can stave off carbon pricing and other anti-fossil fuel initiatives, is another year of profits. Both industries know much as the tobacco industry must have known, that the reckoning will come, but so long as investors can make a return, and senior management can reap the bonuses, the tactic continues.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
How about the CEOs of the companies that pay the scientists and buy off the politicians? How about the major institutional investors and boards that put pressure on senior management to maximize profits regardless of every other consideration?
The scientists and politicians are like concentration camp prison guards. Yes, they ought to be criminally culpable, but the real masterminds have MBAs and law and accounting degrees.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I remember a decade and a half ago there were scandals where false Global Warming data had been spread around.
It happened more recently than that of course. Not so long ago (last year), on this site I had a guy claiming that there was no warming and pasted a link to a data site (woodfortrees.org) to prove it. Of course his link was carefully constructed to exclude regions where the warming signal was more obvious - in other words, he concealed the truth. Which did make me think how (or if) he actually believed there was no warming if he went to that much trouble to conceal the warming signal?
I disagree though, that this ought to make me distrust the science. Yep, there's lots of liars out there. Plenty of the top level operatives (e.g. Judith Currie, Anthony Watts) are sponsored by PR companies to spread "a difference version of the truth" (in other words, lies) but how does that actually impugn the science of climate at all? It sounds counterintuitive to me, that the existence of bodies who are paid to disguise the facts actually means the facts themselves are in doubt.
If you haven't seen them, you should go watch the documentary films King Corn and Food, Inc. King Corn in particular goes into detail about the transition in the US from a diet with lots of fat and lower levels of sugar into one where eating fat is evil and will send you to hell and not eating sugar is evil and will send you to hell.
Food, Inc is more general but it shows clearly why food production in the US is so screwed up.
Or all the studies saying vaccines are safe, when we know big pharma makes money, or all the ones saying climate change is happening, when we know there is political power to be had there, or the ones saying wifi is safe, when tech companies are making money. You don't think it's possible some of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the world might have a hand in that too?
We all remember the incredibly eye-opening lecture named "Sugar: the bitter truth" from almost a decade ago. Robert Lustig, the presenter, is an Emeritus Professor at surprise surprise UCSF!
The Sugar Association is full of it when blaming the researchers of bias.
It was a partisan battle against legitimate science and it is still going on.
The reason you are seeing it the way you are is because at one point some Republicans decided, with the help of a lot of donor money, to make it a point of difference between them and the Democrats. Prior to that other conservatives, such as Margret Thatcher in the UK, were on the side of reality and not inspired to drift off into the land of fantasy on that topic by large donations.
Don't blame the scientists for Al Gore dumbing things down and "jazzing" things up in response to some Republicans spouting PR bullshit they were paid to say.
Well okay, seeing as how I'm part of that 'science industry' as you put it, your claim is interesting if true. Let's see here, the first study detected proteins at a level lower than that test can accurately detect (ergo it was noise), the second one doesn't seem to indicate anything special about GE crops, the third one is mere correlation by a known liar with a made up institute (you could use that exact same bogus methodology to link those maladies with organic food sales), the fourth one has been widely debunked for extremely shoddy methodology, then next couple are about glyphosate, not actually genetic engineering, which is it's own often misunderstood topic, the ninth study was based basically on eyeballing pig organs with nothing particularly substantive and was widely criticized when it made the rounds a few years back, and a quick glance over the tenth one looks to me like it does not actually indicate anything about genetic engineering being dangerous, rather it seems to be criticizing not using a one size fits all approach to testing (not a criticism I would make).
So yeah, try again. Maybe explain to me what the causative mechanism is on the genetic and molecular levels and why it shows up in no other type of natural or man made genetic alteration while you're at it because I never really got that part about the claimed dangers of genetic engineering.
Now, about those bribes, know where I can sign up for Monsanto's Free Money Program? Because those stingy bastards haven't been paying me like they're apparently supposed to.
Anyone citing seriously the Seralini et al. study immediately loses all credibility in my eyes.
That article was retracted chiefly because many professional statisticians (I am one) pointed out that this study was, from the point of view of basic statistical methodology, a complete joke. In no significant way did this study establish any correlation between GMO and rat tumors (which is not to say it can't exist. Just that the data collected from this particular study does not prove anything).
It is laughable how the piece you link to suggests a big conspiration because the paper was retracted despite its original publication undergoing a "rigorous peer review". The fact of the matter is, peer review can fail big time (given the number of submitted scientific papers, that is hardly a surprise), and journals should definitely retract papers when it turns out after publication that they are a methodological disgrace.
Expose questionable scientific behavior practices, undisclosed conflicts of interests, biased studies, question established truths -- I am all in favor of it. But using bogus (and in this case sensationalist) studies to do so is self-contradictory. Bad science should be countered by good science, not by wishful thinking and vague conspiration theories.
Sorry, but I honestly can't think of any sensible way how meat would occur as naturally cooked, at least not in quantities that would provide sustenance to a relevant amount of people for a long enough time that an evolutionary process could occur.
Big fail on understanding how evolution works. Something doesn't have to occur "naturally" to create an evolutionary pressure. Diseases, parasites, technologies, climate, predation, food sources, genetic mutation, selective breeding, politics, war, and much more can all create evolutionary pressures. Some of these are "natural" and others not so much. Evolutionary pressures do not have to occur by random chance. The dogs in my living room are there because of selective breeding by another species (us). Had nothing to do with any "natural" randomly occurring process out in the wild.
One of the reasons why a "Paleo-Diet" works, it takes your body a lot more investment of energy to digest uncooked food, hence you lose weight despite eating "the same" food.
The paelo-diet is another in a long line of diet fads popularized and marketed on cherry picked and often incorrect or unsupported ideas about health and nutrition. It was not developed based on scientific methodologies but instead some half baked ideas poorly supported by actual evidence at the time it was popularized starting around 2002. It draws on an appeal to nature and various conspiracy theories regarding the food industry. It's based on the notion that by eating what our ancient ancestors ate that we will be healthier. (Never mind the fact that the actual foods our ancestors ate are no longer available to us) When it works it has little to do with requiring a greater "investment of energy to digest uncooked food". That's a very convenient (but wrong) sound bite explanation for something which is FAR more complicated in reality.
Unless you mean "falsified" instead of "verified."
You don't know what that means. I mean "falsified". Google: "Scientific method".
Even the IPCC now admits that the Hockey Stick was bogus.
No. Categorically no. They have not. The most recent research on the hockey stick of any notability is Marcott et al in 2013, using an even broader data set and again, just like every other time, the hockey stick is still there.
Well I'll be sure to tell my collegues at work they can bin their PhDs because random internet guy just owned them! I'm sure when they stop laughing they'll be sure to revise a century and a half of physics because internet.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
HFCS used in sodas is a 55% fructose + 42% glucose mix.
I.e. 55 parts of "fat making sugar" and 42 parts of "blood sugar level" sugar.
Brain only understands glucose and will keep demanding more until the desired glucose level is reached.
Sucrose is 50-50.
Thus, for every two units of sugar you ingest, trying to satisfy your brain's desire for glucose with sucrose you get something like this:
[F][F][F][F][F]-[F][F][F][F][F]
[G][G][G][G][G]-[G][G][G][G][G]
10 units of fructose + 10 units of glucose.
With HFCS (55-42), for every two units of HFCS you're getting this:
[F][F][F][F][F]-[F][F][F][F][F]
[G][G][G][G]-[G][G][G][G]
20% less glucose, i.e. 20% lower blood sugar level, i.e. your brain will ask for at least 20% MORE of that sugary drink before reaching its desired blood sugar level.
Getting even more fructose along with it.
Looking at those same numbers from a BSL angle, taking that desired BSL as some individual 100% glucose level...
For 100% glucose satiety (i.e. reaching BSL desired by your brain) by ingesting HFCS, with your glucose you must also ingest 130.9% of fructose you'd be ingesting with sucrose.
I.e. HFCS makes you ingest 30% more fructose, which goes directly into triglycerides as by that time you already have plenty of glycogen.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens