NYT: How the sugar industry shifted the blame to fat

[Mierin]

It's kinda crazy how much sugar is in our food. It's pretty difficult to find a chili recipe without it (without specifically looking for it). Most tomato soups have sugar added, which is probably why it tastes good.

Just with chili and 2 Tbsp salad dressing today I had 24g of added sugar. That's already over what you're supposed to have in a day.

 

[Landlord]

If you are so stupid you didn't know sugar was bad for you then you get what you deserve.

Not knowing something like that is 0% related to someone's intelligence.

 

[Mierin]

Not knowing something like that is 0% related to someone's intelligence.

In addition to that, millions of people were tricked into thinking fat = bad when it comes to diet. And not because they were dumb.

 

[Enhance]

If any of you want to see a really interesting documentary about this topic, you should check out That Sugar Film. It came out in 2014 about two years before this NYT article.

It follows an Australian man who leaves home and goes to America for a couple of months to investigate sugar's impact in the 'western diet.' Part of his challenge is he ends up dropping his own diet and only eating foods marketed as 'low-fat.' He ends up gaining a lot of weight, losing energy, etc.

There are some really fascinating segments of that documentary including the one below. IIRC, the kid in the hat grew up in a part of Kentucky that founded (or has had) a Pepsi production facility for decades. Needless to say, drinking soda (specifically Mountain Dew) is a huge part of the culture, so much so that his 3-year-old cousin drinks it out of the bottle.