As the saying goes, “You are what you eat.” Americans eat too many sweets. As a result, the country is suffering a serious health crisis. Dating back to the 1950s, professionals within the medical, nutritional, political, and food industries solely blamed fats and cholesterols for the planet’s growing health concerns. So people cut the fats and cholesterols but poured on the sugar. Today, big food corporations and well-connected associations within the industry dump sugar into their products in coordinated efforts to maximize their profits. The impact on consumers is immense.
Some time ago, the average American became dependent on sugar without even realizing this bittersweet truth. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, an incident made public via his chief physician, Dr. Paul Dudley. In his press conference, Dr. Dudley informed Americans that the best way to avoid heart disease and other health hazards was by not smoking and minimizing fats and cholesterols in their diets.
Dudley supported his claims on fats and cholesterol’s in an article based mainly on research by nutritionist Ancel Keys. Keys’ research helped define the present. He gained credibility from the support of the President and his chief medical physician. Thus, his research had a nation convinced that fats and cholesterols were at the core of the growing heart disease and obesity problem.
Not much has changed. Walk into the average grocery store and you’ll see products specifically marketed towards individuals and families trying to make health-conscious decisions about their diet. Products are labeled with trendy health phrases like “Fat-Free” or “Low Cholesterol.” However, in order to make these “healthy” alternatives actually enjoyable and profitable, companies add sugar into the recipes. Today, sugars are the most popular additives in the food supply.
In 1972, nutritionist John Yudkin’s “Pure, White, and Deadly” blew the whistle by explaining how sugars—not fats and cholesterols—are actually the major culprit behind the growing obesity problem. Yudkin insists that the sugar levels being ingested by the average consumer are a chronic insult to the body. They form unhealthy quantities of insulin within and around their organic systems. This was a bold claim at the time given the previously defined general consensus.
Then the resistance began. Elite nutritionists with published research funded by well-connected food corporations and associations worked effectively to discredit Yudkin’s life work. They convinced people that the earlier paradigm on dietary health should still hold sway. Although Yudkin’s book actually did quite well at the time, today his research as a scientific nutritionist and health activist has been largely forgotten.
Nevertheless, a few major players continue to fight for better dietary standards. In 2003, the World Health Organization released a report relating to guidelines and recommendations for maintaining healthy dietary habits. In the report, the WHO recommends that no more than 10% of a person’s daily calorie intake should be taken from sugars. Big food coalitions like the Sugar Association maintain that 25% of daily calories from sugar is perfectly acceptable.
Other disparities deserve attention. For instance, for a 2,000 calorie daily diet, the World Health Organization recommends two hundred calories from sugar. The sugar industry insists on five hundred calories, or an extra 2,100 calories from sugars every week in comparison to the WHO’s recommendation. Such numbers should sound the alarms in the general public. However, the mainstream media remains silent, leaving people uneducated and voiceless.
This collective ignorance allows food corporations to continue ringing in massive profits almost every financial quarter. Each fiscal year, they induce people to eat mostly unhealthy meals. We live in a world where PepsiCo and Coca-Cola own almost 40% of the world’s $532 billion soft-drink market The packaged food industry earns over $2.2 trillion in annual sales. A growing demographic insists that companies spare some of their profits to protect theit customers’ health.
Obviously, a 15% reduction in sugar intake across the globe would significantly affect the profits of companies with products dependent on added sugars. So, food corporations protecting their profits aggressively. In a threatening letter to the director general of the World Health Organization, the president of the Sugar Association insisted that the science behind their 10% figure was flawed. He went on to say that if the recommendation was not lifted from the report, the industry would lobby the United States legislature to pull the nation’s annual $406 million in funding to the World Health Organization.
When the report remained in circulation, the industry retaliated. The Sugar Association and six other interest groups representing over 300 companies wrote to the U.S. health secretary. They asked the secretary to personally intervene in the efforts to support the WHO report and threaten to pull federal funding for the WHO. No one ever redacted The 10% suggestion on sugar calorie intake from the 2003 report. Regardless, no one said much of anything regarding more moderate sugar intake guidelines in subsequent WHO reports. Since then, not too much has changed.
The decisions corporate executives make in boardroom meetings affect everyone living in their vast food empires. Their policies propagate obesity and chronic health problems. We need to educate ourselves to purchase and consume products mindfully. Otherwise, we surrender our power of choice to corporate executives who care about financial reports and little else. Corporate profits may depend on sugar, but our diets should not. Americans must realize that their long-term health should outweigh short-term corporate profits.
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Ian McLeod currently lives in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado. He enjoys hiking, creative culture, and all things science and science-fiction. He is currently pursuing a science degree at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
