Risk Factors For Heart Disease

How 'Bitter' can sugar get?

- Sudha Hariharan

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have revealed some shocking truths. Almost 50 years ago, the sugar industry is reported to have paid Harvard University nutrition scientists to make a case against fat and fatty acids/lipids as primary causes of heart disease while downplaying the negative health effects of sugary foods and beverages. The Harvard scientists received the equivalent of $50,000 in today's dollars, the investigators said.

As a result, for decades consumers may have been under the wrong notion that only saturated fat harmed the heart, and not sweets. Not surprisingly, during that time, obesity and associated ills like diabetes reached alarming levels in the United States. The research review by the

Harvard scientists was commissioned by a trade group for the sugar industry when the media began highlighting the health risks of sugar. This report appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967!

Sugar is an ingredient adding to a culinary delight, but have you seen the poisonous side of it? Too much of those tablespoons can slowly and gradually result in a heart attack, and that’s a ‘not-so-sweet’ truth.

Sakshi Anand had an innate love for everything sweet since her school days. She was drawn to the taste of sweetness just like a bee to honey. Her mother, an ever-indulgent parent, often gave in to her need for an ice-cream in the market, a cherry muffin on a shopping trip, or candy floss after school. It became the family joke that Sakshi always needed sweets as fuel. Unfortunately, her parents did not realise that it was far from a joke.