Kick Sugar To The Curb For The Most Healthy Diet Plans

It’s sugar, not fat, that causes heart attacks. And it turns out that the sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960’s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead.

Fifty years of doctors’ advice and government eating guidelines have been wrong. We’ve been told to swap eggs for cereal. But that recommendation is dead wrong. In fact, it’s very likely that this bad advice has killed millions of Americans.

A rigorously done study shows that those with the highest sugar intake had a four-fold increase in their risk of heart attacks compared to those with the lowest intakes. Just one 20-ounce soda increases your risk of a heart attack by about 30 percent.

The debate about the relative harms of sugar and saturated fat continues today. For many decades, health officials encouraged Americans to reduce their fat intake, which led many people to consume low-fat, high-sugar foods that some experts now blame for fueling the obesity crisis.

It was recently discovered that back in 1965, the sugar industry enlisted Harvard researchers to write a review that would debunk the anti-sugar studies. They paid them a total of $6,500, the equivalent of $49,000 today. They selected the papers for them to review and made it clear they wanted the result to favor sugar.

As they worked on their review, the Harvard researchers shared and discussed early drafts with the sugar industry, who responded that they were pleased with what they were writing. The Harvard scientists had dismissed the data on sugar as weak and given far more credence to the data implicating saturated fat.

After the review was published, the debate about sugar and heart disease died down, while low-fat diets gained the endorsement of many health authorities.

For years, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that fat causes heart attacks and raises cholesterol, and that sugar is harmless except as a source of empty calories. They are not empty calories. As it turns out, sugar calories are deadly calories. Sugar causes heart attacks, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and dementia, and is the leading cause of liver failure in America.

This new research syncs with decades of data on how sugar causes insulin resistance, high triglycerides, lower HDL (good) cholesterol and dangerous small LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also triggers the inflammation we now know is at the root of heart disease.

And fats, including saturated fats, have been unfairly blamed. With the exception of trans fats, fats are actually protective. This includes omega-3 fats, nuts and olive oil, which was proven to reduce heart attack risk by more than 30 percent in a recent large randomized controlled study.

Here’s the simple fact: Sugar calories are worse than other calories. All calories are not created equal. A recent study of more than 175 countries found that increasing overall calories didn’t increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, but increasing sugar calories did — dramatically.

So if you really want to follow the most healthy diet plans, don’t worry as much about how much fat you eat. Focus more on kicking sugar to the curb.