How the Sugar Industry Keeps You Hooked

[Music] type 2 diabetes hypertension lipid problems cardiovascular disease cancer dementia the list of medical problems tied directly to the food we're being marketed we are actually making ourselves sicker by eating the processed food that the food industry has told us is good for us the industry doesn't have to tell us how much they processed the food we're eating the USDA released the first mandatory nutrition labels on food in 1990 by listing ingredients only they masked what processing was doing to the product problem is it's not what's in the food it's what's been done to the

food and you could not tell the difference between sugar that say in Fruit versus that which the company added as refined sugar becomes a key ingredient in almost everything America sees a skyrocketing number of diabetes cases affecting more than 30 million today the condition can also lead to Heart problems kidney disease nerve damage even amputation dentists also begin to see an epidemic of tooth decay that's exactly what Kristen Kern saw she's a pediatric dentist who uncovered the hidden history of the big sugar Lobby through more than a decade of painstaking research as a dentist I

know that the sugar industry has really infiltrated into my profession for a very long time they've sponsored dozens and dozens and dozens of scientific projects between the 40s and the 70s and over 300 Publications and I think we've only scratched the surface on telling the story of what the sugar industry's been up to behind the scenes Karns became an authority on sugar after first hearing the industry tell its big lie at a dental conference in 2007 I was given a brochure by one of the keynote speakers about how dentists could help manage type 2 diabetic

patients and it didn't say anything about reducing sugar and then a second keynote speaker ranked lipin brisk sweet tea which had 44 g of sugar as a healthy drink and I actually chased him down and said how can you possibly say sweet tea is healthy and his answer to me was there is no evidence linking sugar to chronic disease and I was literally stunned I had no words tooth decay is the number one chronic disease in children you know how could you possibly say the sugar is not linked to chronic disease so I started to

wonder had the sugar industry influenced what I was hearing at this Dental conference Kars began researching the sugar industry and stumbled upon an industry how-to guide for deceiving the public I typed in sugar to my local library catalog and Found Records to the Great Western Sugar Company I'd never heard of the Great Western Sugar Company I started looking through the finding Aid and found these boxes with references to nutrition and policy I couldn't believe that I'd found that but I happened to be the first one to look at these confidential sugar industry documents just sitting

unexplored in this collection Karns had in her hands The Smoking Gun records of a secret campaign by the trade group representing cane and beet sugar and this was a public relations campaign that set out to influence the Food and Drug Administration who at the time was evaluating the SA of sucrose for the first time in the 1970s so all of the documents I found showed how the sugar industry influenced that FDA report they also showed how the sugar industry was mirroring the successful campaign to shape government policy and public opinion launched by big tobacco decades

earlier sugar and tobacco companies definitely use the same strategies and it's all about casting doubt on that evidence uh linking a product to any kind of harmful effects and and then pairing that together with a PR campaign to get the message out what cigarette do you smoke doctor the brand named most was camel yes surveys show more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette smoke camels the cigarette so many doctors enjoy the world's most thoroughly tested filter that's snowfresh filter cool cool Kars uncovered how the sugar industry laid its own trap to deceive the sugar

industry was very good at following a line that tobacco industry has is uh done quite well in which is to obfuscate science how the sugar industry paid experts to downplay health risks the sugar industry paid scientists to find either that Sugar had very little to do with a range of Public Health outcomes or more successfully pointed the finger away from sugar towards fat and that's why you had through the 1970s a very successful deflection by the true sugar industry of Regulation away from itself towards the regulation around the consumption of fat are you making the

most of your Marvel Marvel makes cooking deliciously light and helps keep you looking just right when used in a calorie controlled diet and so this started the Low Fat craze example of that skim milk turns out that dietary fat was actually good for us dietary fat actually suppressed cardiovascular disease we took that out and so basically we engineered our products to be toxic and they didn't just make foods that were unhealthy they actually promoted them as being the better choice dry delicious light and thick Greek it's no ordinary nonfat yogurt be Light and Fit and

satisfied in these folders it listed all of the research projects that they are funding the scientific Consultants that they were working with the pr firms they hired the ways in which they were connecting with the media to get their messages across their strategy was to publish science that would be conflicting with evidence that might be linking sugar to obesity or diabetes or heart disease or tooth decay along with paying scientists to write reports in its favor and masking its involvement by hiding its funding the sugar Association pushes back on findings it doesn't like a strategy

that's become common practice in many parts of the food industry the food industry has tried to discredit people who get in its way they have tried to discredit me hopefully to this point to no avail but you know they they they have their ways the sugar industry definitely comments on anything that I write they write a letter to the editor uh if I get media attention they're writing press releases to try and counter what I say the sugar industry is done very well in terms of messing about with the science and avoiding regulation the soda

industry is really exhibit a here a number of initiatives and a number of local ballots across the country try very hard to introduce something called a soda tax the new tax that's leaving a bitter aftertaste is almost a week old a small tax a cent or two per fluid ounce to be able to dissuade consumption and use that money for public health benefits and they did very well the sugar sweet beverage so what does the soda industry do they Lobby very hard the American Beverage Association opposing attacks on sugar sweetened drinks it's a bad tax

this tax is only going to hurt and successfully I feel like I have the right to drink soda and if I need to gain a few pounds that's my right even the news media becomes the messenger for Big Sugar the sweetened beverage tax is no more in Cook County come back to Cook County spend your money here the influence of the sugar Lobby extends to both the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration the government divisions meant to regulate the industry the heads of each of these organizations can come from the industry

they go back to the industry they make sure that other people from the industry go back into government and so there is this revolving door that basically keep the USDA and the FDA from being able to be uh overhauled it's known as agency capture and the USDA and the FDA are the most famous captured agencies in American government in fact the scientific committee that reviewed the dangers of sugar for the FDA was led by a man named George Irving he was also a paid consultant for the sugar industry so he was responsible for that safety

review of sugar and that's a common strategy is to get industry-friendly scientists on these review committees it works for the food industry and ultimately it works for government too because they make $56 billion off the tariffs each year the problem is they have not yet equated the cost of the health care crisis that they have caused they see this as a separate Silo so let's do the math on this the food industry makes $1.4 trillion a year of which $657 billion is gross profit there's a lot of money riding on this healthc care in America

cost in 2015 3.5 trillion of that 75% is chronic metabolic disease of which 75% of that could be reversed if we went back to the way we ate back in 197 before this chronic metabolic disease pandemic took off like a moonshot 75% of 75% of $3.5 trillion is $1.9 trillion a year going down a rat hole and 62% of all Healthcare dollars are paid for by the US government that is a trillion dollars a year that the government is paying so that the food industry can make it 657 billion this is unsustainable and all that

happens is that Healthcare goes down the tubes our personal health continues to shorten our lives and we are ulating the planet in the process all to keep propped up Ultra processed food [Music]