Sweet Release: sweet, white & deadly—Sugar industry corruption of science & politics—Ashes Ashes #14
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 19/02/2019

It's natural, it's delicious, it's everywhere, and it may be killing us. For years, sugar has been overlooked as a serious detriment to our health because of the manipulations of the sugar industry in both science and politics. But the lies are coming to light as the diseases caused by that deadly white powder threaten to overwhelm the health systems of the world.

Can we wake in time up to the danger that this major health risk is posing? Or are we too addicted to the sweet release? Join us this week as we explore the how and why of sugar.

Podcast by Ashes Ashes, reposted under CC License. Browse episode resources & read full transcript at https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-14-sweet-release

Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org

CHAPTERS
0:20 Progress in the 21st Century
4:45 The Scam
13:06 "Pure, White, and Deadly"
14:06 Ancel Keys
15:11 Seven Countries Study
17:10 Coca-cola continues the scam in 2015
19:54 The Start of Nutrition
24:18 Pendulum Swings
27:26 The Failure of the Scientific Method and Industry Infiltration
30:37 "This is Objective Science"
33:24 Publication Bias
36:43 Failure of Politics
38:52 Local Political Manipulation
39:52 What Can We Do?
41:12 Food Access
43:35 Food Affordabilty
46:39 Don't Shame
48:08 Avoid Bad Science

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
David: Here's a great fact. According to Sugar.org, “the simple irrefutable fact is this: sugar is a healthy part of a diet.” Full stop. Quote.

Daniel: In the 1950s, there was a debate going on about the dietary contributions to coronary heart disease, and some of the research was increasingly pointing towards sucrose, or common table sugar. The sugar industry did not like this, and the vice president of The Sugar Foundation, John Hickson, had a plan.

He went to Harvard in 1965, approached two nutrition scientists he considered fit for the job, and gave them money to write a review article on the current research related to sugar in the diet. Hickson essentially said "we don't like the research saying sugar is bad for people, please fix this, and here's some money." And the Harvard scientists said "understood."

This review would ultimately dismiss the research that claimed sugar caused coronary heart disease, instead promoting papers pointing the finger at fat and dietary cholesterol. And as the review was being written, Hickson got to see the drafts in progress, and before the final was published, he wrote to the Harvard scientists to say "this is exactly what we wanted, good job."

The Harvard scientist never disclosed the money they were paid or anything about the Sugar Foundation, and what’s especially interesting is that before starting the review the Harvard researchers asked Hixson to provide the papers for them to use. 

It was a play right out of Edward Bernay’s book. He stressed that if you want to influence culture, you don't do it by telling people what to do directly, but by influencing thought leaders. In this case literally paying off Harvard scientists, and to drive home how influential these scientists were, one of them became the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, and in 1977 he helped create what would become the official government stance on nutrition in America.

Edward Bernays would use news and media to shape the narrative in the public sphere. When a big paper comes out in a prestigious Journal, it sets the narrative in many ways. A proliferation of articles will come out, and any major media source like the New York Times may have an original slant, but they all cite the same exact paper.

David: Coca-Cola has a history of paying fitness experts and bloggers to write things like “you know what a good healthy snack is? A mini Coca-Cola can!”

In many cases it's not obvious to us that these are ads; maybe we just assume this person loves mini coca-colas. What’s more insidious is that many of the people who get paid by companies like Coca-Cola realize they can start making a career out of this, of hawking these unhealthy snacks to people.

No longer do PR teams have to reach out to these people, but when a fitness guru sees an article come out against sugar for example, now the guru calls up Coke and says “I can spin this in your favor, are you interested?”

Daniel: So what does the science actually say? We don't want to get too deep into of nutrition science, and what the best foods are to eat… There’s plenty of people talking about nutrition these days.

David: We're not nutritionists or pretending to be nutritionists, we're looking at how these companies have affected our health, the way we approach the world, and how we live our lives.

But to understand that we do need to understand a bit of the science behind both nutrition and sugar. Maybe the best place to look at that is where nutrition science first got its start—in Germany.