---
title: "Is Fat Really the Culprit Behind Obesity? Coke and Candy Makers Spent Half a Century Framing It—Fat Says, 'I Won't Take the Blame'"
description: "The article reveals how the sugar industry, through its front organization ISRF, manipulated scientific research for decades to shift the blame for heart disease and obesity from sugar to fat, influencing U.S. nutrition policy and public perception."
author: "酷玩实验室"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-10-10"
categories: "General Commentary"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-fat-really-the-culprit-behind-obesity-coke-and-candy-makers-spent-hal-1724009f/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-fat-really-the-culprit-behind-obesity-coke-and-candy-makers-spent-hal-1724009f.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_PIPn0X2iIb1AHtyT-oLgQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%82%A5%E8%83%96%E5%85%83%E5%87%B6%E7%9C%9F%E6%98%AF%E8%84%82%E8%82%AA%E5%90%97-%E5%8F%AF%E4%B9%90%E5%92%8C%E7%B3%96%E6%9E%9C%E5%8E%82%E5%95%86%E8%8A%B1%E5%8D%8A%E4%B8%AA%E4%B8%96%E7%BA%AA%E5%AB%81%E7%A5%B8-%E8%84%82%E8%82%AA%E8%AF%B4%E8%BF%99%E9%94%85%E6%88%91%E4%B8%8D%E8%83%8C-1724009f.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-fat-really-the-culprit-behind-obesity-coke-and-candy-makers-spent-hal-1724009f/"
citation: "酷玩实验室. “Is Fat Really the Culprit Behind Obesity? Coke and Candy Makers Spent Half a Century Framing It—Fat Says, 'I Won't Take the Blame'.” New Distribution, 2016-10-10. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-fat-really-the-culprit-behind-obesity-coke-and-candy-makers-spent-hal-1724009f/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Is Fat Really the Culprit Behind Obesity? Coke and Candy Makers Spent Half a Century Framing It—Fat Says, 'I Won't Take the Blame'

> The article reveals how the sugar industry, through its front organization ISRF, manipulated scientific research for decades to shift the blame for heart disease and obesity from sugar to fat, influencing U.S. nutrition policy and public perception.

Source: Cool Play Lab (ID: coollabs)
Recently, Sister Egg Egg also accidentally fell in love with drinking Coke. As someone who treats weight loss as a lifelong career, I find it increasingly hard to resist the pleasure of fried chicken with Coke, or Coke with hotpot... But then, one day I was chatting with a friend in medicine, and he slapped down the hand holding the Coke bottle, saying, "Do you know how dangerous this stuff is!" He then told me a story that scared me to the ground.
**Image: John Lennon also loved Coke**
In 1943, the predecessor of the Sugar Association, the **International Sugar Research Foundation (ISRF)**, was established. At that time, heart disease was gradually becoming the leading cause of death in the United States, but the cause had not yet been identified, prompting public research into dietary risk factors. Scientists at the time had already begun to suspect sugar, but for the booming sugar industry, their research was a threat like a fishbone in the throat. Under the coercion and bribery of large sugar companies, ISRF began to do bad things. They spent heavily to buy off Ancel Keys, a nutrition professor at the University of Minnesota. Tempted by the high bribe, Keys quickly transformed from a rigorous scientist into a smooth talker who misleads people. In 1956, he conducted a seemingly large-scale survey, the famous "Seven Countries Study." Based on the results, he concluded: **The real culprit behind heart disease is not sugar, but fat!** His theory was simple: high cholesterol levels trigger heart disease, and the more saturated fat you eat (like egg yolks), the higher your cholesterol, so saturated fat causes heart disease. But in fact, his Seven Countries Study sampled people from 22 countries, yet when publishing the conclusions, the data points from the other 15 countries mysteriously disappeared! The remaining seven countries' data, though seemingly extensive, were also selectively filtered. Not only did they deliberately exclude data from healthy countries with high dietary fat intake—Switzerland and France—but they also picked only 499 out of 12,770 people whose data favored his argument.
**Image: Dietary habit data from the "Seven Countries Study"**
This fake study influenced U.S. nutrition policy for 50 years. The authoritative American Heart Association, in 1956, used this theory as a basis to promote that dietary cholesterol and fat are the culprits behind heart disease. Keys even made the cover of Time magazine in 1961. Keys kept falsely claiming that the higher the fat content in a country's diet, the higher the death rate from heart disease. It wasn't until 1972 that scientists representing justice finally got a small chance to speak. Professor John Yudkin of Queen Elizabeth College, London, published an article titled "Pure, White and Deadly," warning that sugar is very dangerous.
**Image: "Pure, White and Deadly"**
This well-evidenced research was irrefutable, and the sugar industry bigwigs panicked. They again had the Sugar Research Foundation (ISRF) come forward to quell the disturbance. ISRF shamelessly told the public: > Only saccharin and cyclamate are the culprits behind tooth decay, heart disease, and diabetes; other sugars are innocent! And they spent $600,000 to diligently study the harms of saccharin and cyclamate. Finally, through ISRF's unremitting efforts, in animal experiments, saccharin caused bladder cancer in lab mice. ISRF was very excited—now they had evidence—and thus successfully attributed the harm to saccharin. Saccharin was put on the FDA's banned list and remains so to this day. In 1977, ISRF nearly added cyclamate to the blacklist as well, and also took down the rising low-sugar beverage industry. As for Yudkin, who disagreed with them, the big talker Keys did not show mercy, often publicly disparaging Yudkin. Thus, under the siege of Keys and ISRF, the "sugar hypothesis" supported by the righteous Professor Yudkin was strangled in its cradle at birth. This massive whitewashing campaign led most people to never see sugar as a scourge, but merely as a daily seasoning. However, as times progressed, experts delved deeper into research on cardiovascular disease. They found that cholesterol, triglycerides, and sugar are all triggers for cardiovascular disease. So ISRF began to divert public attention. They funded experiments that supported the idea that sugar is harmless, while ignoring those that threatened sugar. Among the experiments ISRF funded, a researcher from Pennsylvania believed there was solid evidence that sugar is harmful, so ISRF hid the results. Another scholar from the University of Birmingham in the UK invented a mechanism to test how sugar raises triglyceride levels, so ISRF halted the experiment, claiming it was worthless. By 1973, the link between sugar and diabetes and heart disease was quite evident. For the benefit of sugar companies, to keep candy and beverages selling, sugar companies spent over $650,000 to support ISRF's research projects. ISRF did not disappoint, bringing in their good friend, a loyal advocate of the "fat theory," Professor Keys's good friend Francisco Grande as a medical expert, and established the Food and Nutrition Advisory Committee, **whose members included scientists friendly to the sugar industry and so-called research members from big sugar users like Coca-Cola, Hershey, General Mills, and Nabisco.** The group's main job was to review research topics funded by ISRF, removing those that vilified sugar and keeping those that supported it!
**Image: The Sugar Association's statement whitewashing sugar**
The Sugar Association's solution to accusations against sugar. Most of the money sugar companies invested was used to reward reports whose results were clearly deliberately favorable to sugar. The leading figure in the Food and Nutrition Advisory Committee was Dr. Frederick Stare, who later became the founder and dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and authored a series of books influencing people's diets. Stare led the committee in 1975 to write an 88-page white paper, "Sugar in the Diet," which compiled "historical evidence" and "controversies" about sugar's harmlessness. It was later used by sugar companies to attack Professor Yudkin and those who considered sugar harmful—the "sugar enemies." In 1965, Hickson paid $50,000, with Stare as the intermediary, to bring in three Harvard researchers to publish an article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine criticizing studies that found sugar harmful to health. Hickson had the three scholars shift public attention to fat, downplaying sugar's harms. ISRF also arranged for Stare to speak on various radio and TV stations to endorse "safe" sugar, successfully suppressing surrounding doubts. An article in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that ISRF chairman Hickson had close correspondence with the three scholars while they were writing their review article, sharing and discussing drafts until Hickson was satisfied with their conclusions. Later, the Sugar Research Foundation (ISRF) evolved into the **Sugar Association**. On September 12, 2016, The New York Times finally exposed how this organization paid experts to spread rumors, spent heavily to buy fake papers, colluded with three industry experts including a former USDA nutrition department head and a former dean of Harvard's nutrition school, and spent heavily to create multiple papers to completely whitewash sugar. After reading the whole article, Sister Egg Egg found that Coca-Cola has also been funding such scientific research to weaken public awareness of the risks of sugary drinks. Their ads have always claimed that sugar is harmless, just "empty calories" that cause tooth decay. Thinking about this, I feel a chill down my spine. Food giants manipulate us everywhere. They use marketing and dazzling ads to make us believe that the food they sell is fun, tasty, and harmless. There are countless such examples. For instance, don't you also love to twist, lick, and dunk Oreos?
-END-
The best learning platform for FMCG distributors in China, dedicated to providing professional, practical, and actionable tutorials for companies and distributors, committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly.
**The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry**
Reply with the red number below to get the corresponding content. Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base.
| **001** Excellent article selection | **002** Distributor market operations | **003** Terminal visit management | **004** Sales supervisor skills | **005** Sales improvement techniques | **006** Channel expansion | **007** Managing distributors | **008** Distributor development | **009** Distributor internal operations management | **010** Team management | **011** Efficient distribution techniques | **012** Sales manager's eighteen skills | **013** KA operation methods and strategies | **014** First lesson for new salespeople | **015** Internet, brands | **016** Distributor B2B transformation |
[Long press QR code to follow]


---

## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 酷玩实验室
- Published: 2016-10-10
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/is-fat-really-the-culprit-behind-obesity-coke-and-candy-makers-spent-hal-1724009f/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_PIPn0X2iIb1AHtyT-oLgQ

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671