David Singerman

There's an outfit called the Sugar Research Foundation, which is sort of like the pro industry PR shop.

In the 1960s and 70s, the sugar industry paid scientists at places like Harvard to publish studies blaming fat and cholesterol for coronary heart disease while leaving sugar out of the picture.

And we know this thanks to some work from researchers at UCSF who've dug into this in the same way that they dug into the tobacco industry.

So you can see that the tobacco industry and the sugar industry are really like playing from the same book.

The concern about sugar now on health grounds, I think, comes out of the same opposition to sort of capitalist food systems that we see manifested in a lot of places.

It's manifested in these Whole Foods bags that list everything that's not in your food, like artificial sweeteners all the way to whale oil.

It comes from a concern about

like trying to emphasize local food systems and eating healthier and eating more simple things and less refined stuff in general, not just refined sugar.

There's the sort of like trad culture influencers, right?

And the idea that there used to be a more pure, like wholesome diet and we need to get back to that.

In the 1970s, you had people like moving to Vermont and Maine to like, to have maple syrup, right?

As a kind of like a counter-cultural sweetener.

And then you also have this right-wing,

you know, skepticism of like elite medical science that fed into sort of vaccine world.

And it's weird that those have like come together in this modern Maha movement.

It was really striking during the Super Bowl, right, to see the juxtaposition of Bad Bunny's halftime show, which everybody in my life was texting me because it began with, you know, the sugarcane field.

And then that was followed up by this realfood.gov ad.

Mike Tyson talking about obesity and how Americans need to take their health more seriously.

So that juxtaposition of American empire and sugar cane and then this right-wing critique of capitalist food was a little jarring.

No, I would say the sugar industry is doing all right.