4 ms·

> It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying,

> It did not stem the tide against the rise in obesity, which began in the 70s, largely due to the explosive growth of cheap fast food and junk food, lobbying, and a lack of education around food and health. There was a series of science-mistakes that cascaded into the obesity epidemic. Ancel Keys kicked off the chain by slandering saturated fat. I think there was a protective factor in the food supply that was reduced in the latter half of the 1970’s. Around 1990 McDonald’s was tricked into replacing their saturated frying oil with polyunsaturated oil...

mixmastamyk 2y ago
The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. The bad science was not a mistake—it was deliberate strategy. The same kind of FUD that "Big Tobacco" participated in. Most people are aware of the later but not the former. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Coated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Coated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjTpaohQq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjTpaohQq4
- Clubber 2y ago
  The tobacco companies bought all the food companies in the 80s and 90s and figured out how to make food "hyper-palatable (addictive)," by combining sugar (HFCS), salt (sodium) and fat. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction-foods-hyperpalatable-tobacco/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction...
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Did not know this. Looks like they were diversifying income. Looked it all up on wikipedia, and appears they've divested it again.
- refurb 2y ago
  > The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. I strongly suggest you don't take the information from a documentary, which is focused on engaging story telling in order to make money, with a balanced and complete view of the situation.
  - zen928 2y ago
    Documentaries are a style of presentation that contain a directed, (usually) information-dense slice of a specific topic. It's an easy way to immediately engage in a topic in a manner that can present layman consumable information and establish context on potentially complicated subjects. It's one of many sources of information that should be supplemented with research based fact checking and information gathering. There was no effort to dissuade further research yourself or to not engage with other mediums. I also don't believe they were supposing your only source of information should come from their casual suggestion. "I strongly suggest" you go ahead and link the research papers you've personally vetted like the poster above you trying to contribute to the discussion did that covers these topics indepth if you feel passionate about the lacking information.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    You’ve invalidated all of journalism with a sweeping statement. Healthy skepticism (which everyone should have), is not this.
    - refurb 2y ago
      Documentaries are not journalism, they are entertainment.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Dumb overstatement. They are both and everything in between.
        refurb 2y ago
        Not in the least. Documentaries tell stories. They often leave out facts that run counter, rarely try and provide a balanced view and their intent is to make money.
aspenmayer 2y ago
The entire food pyramid is essentially propaganda from what I understand. Corn subsidies and mandatory corn-derived ethanol in gasoline created a surplus of corn, which led to fructose and high fructose corn syrup being added to everything.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  I have no idea what the motive behind the food pyramid was, but high-fat foods being 2.25x calorie dense per gram compared to carbs, can lead to a surplus more easily compared to carbs. Just eating less sugar will not help if you are consuming too much fat .
- taeric 2y ago
  I thought it was past tense, at this point? I'll try and look in my kid's school next chance I get, but I don't think anyone pushes the pyramid anymore.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    There’s a new one. It has vertical stripes and used to be found at mypyramid.gov. But they junked that in 2011 and replaced it with a trivial pursuit-looking thing called MyPlate. More details at choosemyplate.gov.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  food marketing used to much more aggressively bash competitors' products. many of the companies funding the yo-yo "X is good/bad for you studies" are basically just stealthier versions of this, if you look at who is funding the studies. the most prominent example of this is Heinz ketchup, where Heinz lobbied for the FDA and essentially got most of its competitors out of the market as a result; Heinz was the only major ketchup producer not using preservatives. https://archive.ph/1y8f5 https://archive.ph/1y8f5 --- IIRC the major problem in food science is that most of the people willing to pay for food studies are food makers.
bobthepanda 2y ago
The issue was beef tallow for fries, which they hadn’t disclosed to the public, and so vegetarians or people who don’t eat beef were mad. They could’ve solved the problem either by introducing an alternate or simple disclosure. But they were hardly “tricked.”
- teslabox 2y ago
  Beef tallow was standard practice for fryers, until it was mostly replaced with “vegetable oil”. > vegetarians or people who don’t eat beef were mad. I think you’re referring to the vegetarian who sued Buffalo Wild Wings for still using beef tallow in their fryers, even after the restaurant industry had mostly switched to industrial seed oils. https://www.drovers.com/news/vegetarians-lawsuit-over-beef-tallow-buffalo-wild-wings-dismissed https://www.drovers.com/news/vegetarians-lawsuit-over-beef-t...
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    No, this was much earlier. There was outcry over beef tallow in the 90s and then beef flavorings in the 00s. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/us/mcdonald-s-to-settle-suits-on-beef-tallow-in-french-fries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/us/mcdonald-s-to-settle-s... Part of the reputational risk at McDonald’s was that at the time they were heavily communicating that the standard items were standardized everywhere, so the revelation that US McDonalds used beef in fries did not go down particularly well in South Asia.
    - teslabox 2y ago
      McDonald's was bullied into changing its fryer oil by Phil Sokolof [0], who himself was tricked into believing his 1966 heart attack was caused by saturated fat. This article says Sokolof paid for ads to bully McDonalds in 1988: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1193-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1193-s... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Sokolof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Sokolof I said McDonald's was 'tricked' in ~1990 into switching to vegetable oil. This was trickery both because the fries became less healthy (Omega-6 oils are inflammatory, etc), and less tasty. Malcolm Gladwell's podcast McDonald's Broke My Heart is about how the fryer oil switch made McDonald's fries soggy: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/mcdonald... The 2002 article you linked to is about how vegetarians believed the switch to using seed oils as the fryer oil made McDonald's french fries compatible with their dietary philosophy. Those lawsuits were in the late 1990's or early 2000's, which was well after the 1990/1992 fryer oil switch. Thanks for bringing up the early 2000's lawsuit against McDonald's by vegetarians - I was not aware of that. My point was that Ancel Keys' holy war against saturated Fat was an important part of the cascade of science-mistakes that resulted in the obesity epidemic which took off around 1980 (weight started inching up in the "post WWII" period, but didn't take off until ~1980).

mixmastamyk 2y ago

The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. The bad science was not a mistake—it was deliberate strategy. The same kind of FUD that "Big Tobacco" participated in. Most people are aware of the later but not the former. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Coated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Coated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjTpaohQq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esjTpaohQq4

Clubber 2y ago
The tobacco companies bought all the food companies in the 80s and 90s and figured out how to make food "hyper-palatable (addictive)," by combining sugar (HFCS), salt (sodium) and fat. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction-foods-hyperpalatable-tobacco/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction...
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Did not know this. Looks like they were diversifying income. Looked it all up on wikipedia, and appears they've divested it again.
refurb 2y ago
> The documentary "Sugar Coated" goes into the history regarding the pro-sugar/anti-fat industry lobbying aspect. I strongly suggest you don't take the information from a documentary, which is focused on engaging story telling in order to make money, with a balanced and complete view of the situation.
- zen928 2y ago
  Documentaries are a style of presentation that contain a directed, (usually) information-dense slice of a specific topic. It's an easy way to immediately engage in a topic in a manner that can present layman consumable information and establish context on potentially complicated subjects. It's one of many sources of information that should be supplemented with research based fact checking and information gathering. There was no effort to dissuade further research yourself or to not engage with other mediums. I also don't believe they were supposing your only source of information should come from their casual suggestion. "I strongly suggest" you go ahead and link the research papers you've personally vetted like the poster above you trying to contribute to the discussion did that covers these topics indepth if you feel passionate about the lacking information.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  You’ve invalidated all of journalism with a sweeping statement. Healthy skepticism (which everyone should have), is not this.
  - refurb 2y ago
    Documentaries are not journalism, they are entertainment.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Dumb overstatement. They are both and everything in between.
      - refurb 2y ago
        Not in the least. Documentaries tell stories. They often leave out facts that run counter, rarely try and provide a balanced view and their intent is to make money.

aspenmayer 2y ago

The entire food pyramid is essentially propaganda from what I understand. Corn subsidies and mandatory corn-derived ethanol in gasoline created a surplus of corn, which led to fructose and high fructose corn syrup being added to everything.

paulpauper 2y ago
I have no idea what the motive behind the food pyramid was, but high-fat foods being 2.25x calorie dense per gram compared to carbs, can lead to a surplus more easily compared to carbs. Just eating less sugar will not help if you are consuming too much fat .
taeric 2y ago
I thought it was past tense, at this point? I'll try and look in my kid's school next chance I get, but I don't think anyone pushes the pyramid anymore.
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  There’s a new one. It has vertical stripes and used to be found at mypyramid.gov. But they junked that in 2011 and replaced it with a trivial pursuit-looking thing called MyPlate. More details at choosemyplate.gov.
bobthepanda 2y ago
food marketing used to much more aggressively bash competitors' products. many of the companies funding the yo-yo "X is good/bad for you studies" are basically just stealthier versions of this, if you look at who is funding the studies. the most prominent example of this is Heinz ketchup, where Heinz lobbied for the FDA and essentially got most of its competitors out of the market as a result; Heinz was the only major ketchup producer not using preservatives. https://archive.ph/1y8f5 https://archive.ph/1y8f5 --- IIRC the major problem in food science is that most of the people willing to pay for food studies are food makers.

bobthepanda 2y ago

The issue was beef tallow for fries, which they hadn’t disclosed to the public, and so vegetarians or people who don’t eat beef were mad. They could’ve solved the problem either by introducing an alternate or simple disclosure. But they were hardly “tricked.”

teslabox 2y ago
Beef tallow was standard practice for fryers, until it was mostly replaced with “vegetable oil”. > vegetarians or people who don’t eat beef were mad. I think you’re referring to the vegetarian who sued Buffalo Wild Wings for still using beef tallow in their fryers, even after the restaurant industry had mostly switched to industrial seed oils. https://www.drovers.com/news/vegetarians-lawsuit-over-beef-tallow-buffalo-wild-wings-dismissed https://www.drovers.com/news/vegetarians-lawsuit-over-beef-t...
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  No, this was much earlier. There was outcry over beef tallow in the 90s and then beef flavorings in the 00s. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/us/mcdonald-s-to-settle-suits-on-beef-tallow-in-french-fries.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/us/mcdonald-s-to-settle-s... Part of the reputational risk at McDonald’s was that at the time they were heavily communicating that the standard items were standardized everywhere, so the revelation that US McDonalds used beef in fries did not go down particularly well in South Asia.
  - teslabox 2y ago
    McDonald's was bullied into changing its fryer oil by Phil Sokolof [0], who himself was tricked into believing his 1966 heart attack was caused by saturated fat. This article says Sokolof paid for ads to bully McDonalds in 1988: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1193-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-22-op-1193-s... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Sokolof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Sokolof I said McDonald's was 'tricked' in ~1990 into switching to vegetable oil. This was trickery both because the fries became less healthy (Omega-6 oils are inflammatory, etc), and less tasty. Malcolm Gladwell's podcast McDonald's Broke My Heart is about how the fryer oil switch made McDonald's fries soggy: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/mcdonald... The 2002 article you linked to is about how vegetarians believed the switch to using seed oils as the fryer oil made McDonald's french fries compatible with their dietary philosophy. Those lawsuits were in the late 1990's or early 2000's, which was well after the 1990/1992 fryer oil switch. Thanks for bringing up the early 2000's lawsuit against McDonald's by vegetarians - I was not aware of that. My point was that Ancel Keys' holy war against saturated Fat was an important part of the cascade of science-mistakes that resulted in the obesity epidemic which took off around 1980 (weight started inching up in the "post WWII" period, but didn't take off until ~1980).