Clever Journeys

In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid three Harvard scientists $50,000 to say that heart disease was most likely caused by saturated fat.

The nutritionists paid by the Sugar Research Foundation were Dr. Fredrick Stare, Dr. Robert McGandy and Mark Hegsted. It was Hegsted, deemed by Nestle as “a hero of nutritionists” who went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture.

In 1977, Hegsted helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines.

After these three scientists’ reports were published in JAMA, diets concentrating on low fat gained the endorsement of many health authorities.

Basically, the sugar industry used a similar mode of operation playbook the tobacco industry did.

A study of documents and old letters reveal how sophisticated the sugar executives were in swaying public opinion, They closely tracked the research and carefully cherry-picked which influential scientists to approach.

Decades of this misinformation campaign shaped improper nutritional advice and caused the rise of heart disease in America.

When the World Health Organization initially wanted a limit on sugar to no more than 10% of a healthy diet, America threatened to pull out their funding if they didn’t raise it to at least 25%.

In retrospect, it turns out that added sugars might be more of a risk factor for coronary heart disease than saturated fats, according to a 2015 paper published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases.

The paper suggests that a diet high in added sugars can cause a three-fold increase in the risk of death due to heart disease.

Today, heart disease continues, and it remains the leading cause of death in the United States. About 620,000 people die of heart disease nationwide each year, about one in every four deaths.

Additionally, rates of obesity – which puts people at a higher risk of heart disease – have skyrocketed among both children and adults since the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

When we consider the politics, greed and manipulation that goes into government control and narratives, it makes us wonder about  alternative opportunities that may be available.

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Via https://cleverjourneys.com/2023/12/31/feds-helped-manipulate-health-nutrition-data-for-decades/