Introduction

In his April 7, 2016 piece in The Guardian, “The Sugar Conspiracy” Ian Leslie argues that the politics of nutrition has blinded us to the fact that sugar is more deserving than saturated fat of the status of dietary arch-villain and that the politics continue but the status of sugar and saturated fat are starting to switch.

But we need to move beyond nutritional boogeymen, not switch one for another.

Our sense of history and physiology — key concepts about the historical role of Ancel Keys, the rate at which sugar is converted to fat in a process called de novo lipogenesis, and whether insulin’s stimulation of fat storage can offer a plausible explanation of obesity — get distorted when we try to make a public enemy out of sugar, just as they do when we make a public enemy out of saturated fat.

It’s time for a more nuanced view.

Show Notes

In his April 7, 2016 piece in The Guardian, “The Sugar Conspiracy” Ian Leslie argues that the politics of nutrition has blinded us to the fact that sugar is more deserving than saturated fat of the status of dietary arch-villain and that the politics continue but the status of sugar and saturated fat are starting to switch.

But we need to move beyond nutritional boogeymen, not switch one for another.

Our sense of history and physiology — key concepts about the historical role of Ancel Keys, the rate at which sugar is converted to fat in a process called de novo lipogenesis, and whether insulin’s stimulation of fat storage can offer a plausible explanation of obesity — get distorted when we try to make a public enemy out of sugar, just as they do when we make a public enemy out of saturated fat.

It’s time for a more nuanced view.

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