If you read that headline and couldn’t believe your eyes, keep reading. It gets more unbelievable. It’s also just more proof that each individual person MUST take responsibility for their own health and stop trusting and or expecting the government to do it for us. It ain’t gonna happen, folks. (You can click here to see how I took control of my life and health, years ago.)

In 1956, newspapers ran a photo of President Dwight D. Eisenhower sweetening his coffee with saccharin. The accompanying text explained that his doctor had advised him to avoid sugar if he wanted to remain thin.

So, the sugar industry responded with a national advertising campaign, based on “solid science” explaining that there was no such thing as a fattening food because “All foods supply calories and there is no difference between the calories that come from sugar or steak or grapefruit or ice cream.”

While that kind of “solid science” is forgivable for the late 50’s, you wouldn’t think it would be right now. But, you’d be wrong. In fact, more than 60 years later, the sugar industry makes the same argument. Well, they don’t, but they pay researchers to.

Now, you would think it impossible given the fact that obesity rates have nearly tripled since the 50’s and given that there has been a 655 percent increase in the percentage of Americans with diabetes, but, none the less, the sugar industry still insists that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie- regardless of where it comes from. And the scientific consensus is that obesity is caused by a lack of balance: we eat more calories than we expend.

From the article:

“A 2014 article in an American Diabetes Association journal phrased the situation this way: ‘There is no clear or convincing evidence that any dietary or added sugar has a unique or detrimental impact relative to any other source of calories on the development of obesity or diabetes.’

The absence of evidence, though, as the saying goes, is not necessarily evidence of absence. If the research community had been doing its job and not assuming since the 1920s that a calorie is a calorie, perhaps we would have found such evidence long ago.”

Therefore, don’t blame the sugar industry- blame the researchers and nutrition authorities.

“The assumption ignores decades of medical science, including much of what has become textbook endocrinology (the science of hormones and hormone-related diseases) and biochemistry. By the 1960s, researchers in these fields had clearly demonstrated that different carbohydrates, like glucose and fructose, are metabolized differently, leading to different hormonal and physiological responses, and that fat accumulation and metabolism were influenced profoundly by these hormones. The unique composition of sugar — half glucose, half fructose — made it a suspect of particular interest even then.”

The truth is that different foods have different effects on our cells and therefore, on how much fat we store. (Trying to be diplomatic.) While the effects may be subtle, they can accumulate over years and decades into obesity and diabetes. And THAT is the truth.

Sadly, as long as nutrition and obesity authorities insist that a calorie is a calorie, the sugar industry will defend their product as being no worse than a grilled chicken salad. And in order to combat that thought, we need human experiments- regardless of time and cost- to test these 100-year-old theories.

Source: NY Times