Fat Blaming: When The Sugar Industry Blamed Fat
Fat Blaming: When The Sugar Industry Blamed Fat
When I think back to my days of grocery shopping as a teenager and in my early college years, I can distinctly remember seeking out items that were labeled “fat free”. Fat free bars, fat free popcorn, fat free yogurt, the list goes on. Having the notion, fat makes you fat, I would always opt for the fat free selection. Today, I see a similar trend in labeling of food “gluten free”. Next time, you are in the store take a look at items that are blatantly gluten free, for instance bacon or a twizzler, they will more than likely be labeled gluten free. Anyway, back to that fat free notion, how did this idea that fat makes us fat get inserted into our psyche.
Within the past month the article, “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research,” written by Cristin Kearns, and published within the American Medical Association’s journal of internal medicine, has drawn a lot of buzz inside the health and wellness community. As the actions of Big Sugar has drawn comparisons to Big Tobacco. I think most of us at this point have seen some type of documentary or movie on the actions of tobacco companies to fund research debunking its connection to cancer, heart disease, and other ill health consequences. The findings of Kearns found that sugar companies not only commissioned scientists to spread doubt on the problems of sugar consumption, but also to blame fat for heart disease. What I’ve deemed as the original fat shaming. A line from the New Yorker article “A BIG TOBACCO MOMENT FOR THE SUGAR INDUSTRY” states it best, “The sugar industry, by contrast, wasn’t just interested in creating uncertainty. It explicitly sought to villainize fat, and to place sole blame on it for coronary heart disease.”
Now the biggest take away from this article is that we need to have awareness. With so much information at our fingertips it is even more difficult to do the work to find unbiased findings. And there is no one size fits all approach, you can find positive and negatives within any diet you follow. Following someone else prescription might not have the same results. With that being said I’m going to give a brief outline of my diet as of right now, which could change over time if there are new findings and research that cause me to revisit. These are some staples I follow: staying away from processed foods, eating green leafy vegetables, varying protein (minus breakfast usually Full Fat Yogurt, or as I say triple F full fat fage), and eating healthy fats – from grass fed butter, full fat yogurt, egg yolks, coconut oil, fish and meat, avocado. For the most part this is a safe place to start. Food allergies, insensitivities, or moral principles could all impact whether or not you would these guidelines. And that makes perfect sense; there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to nutrition.