One of the interesting things to emerge from my recent research into nutritional health is the extent to which major food companies — for decades — have been suppressing information on the awful health effects of some of their major products.
Sugar is the biggie.
I'm old enough to remember the innumerable products that were sold as ‘low fat', because that was the way to lose weight and be healthier. There were low fat cookies, ice cream, sour cream, cereal products….
Of course, these were actually terrible for you because they were absolutely loaded with sugars, refined flour and even trans fats.
One might be tempted to think that the food companies were simply misguided and following the medical establishment (which has much to answer for as well in this story, but we’ll save that for later). But this next article pretty much ruins that theory, and places the food companies squarely in the middle of a stench-filled arena:
A couple of years ago, an out-of-print book published in 1972 by a long-dead British professor suddenly became a collector’s item. Copies that had been lying dusty on bookshelves were selling for hundreds of pounds, while copies were also being pirated online.
Alongside such rarities as Madonna’s Sex, Stephen King’s Rage (written as Richard Bachman) and Promise Me Tomorrow by Nora Roberts; Pure, White and Deadly by John Yudkin, a book widely derided at the time of publication, was listed as one of the most coveted out-of-print works in the world.
How exactly did a long-forgotten book suddenly become so prized? The cause was a ground-breaking lecture called Sugar: the Bitter Truth by Robert Lustig, professor of paediatric endocrinology at the University of California, in which Lustig hailed Yudkin’s work as "prophetic".
"Without even knowing it, I was a Yudkin acolyte," says Lustig, who tracked down the book after a tip from a colleague via an interlibrary loan. "Everything this man said in 1972 was the God’s honest truth and if you want to read a true prophecy you find this book… I’m telling you every single thing this guy said has come to pass. I’m in awe."
The tale begins in the Sixties. That decade, nutritionists in university laboratories all over America and Western Europe were scrabbling to work out the reasons for an alarming rise in heart disease levels.
by richardcassie 
