Kevin Klatt, PhD, RD

Note: this post is not brief and ideally requires a bit of pre-reading:   The Sugar Conspiracy NutritionWonk's response discussing Ancel Keys' data If you're looking for a TL;DR version - see here . In Ian Leslie’s longform article, “ The Sugar Conspiracy ,” we get a look into the history of nutrition, and the suggestion that politics and  power dynamics play significant roles in the setting of dietary guidelines. Leslie starts with a historical perspective, focusing on John Yudkin and his early hypotheses regarding sugar’s role in the aetiology of CVD.  Yudkin’s studies, Leslie says,are cast down by the nutrition elite (i.e. Ancel Keys) at the time, in favor of recommendations that suggested limiting fat/saturated fat/cholesterol as the major drivers of CVD. At face value, the story is one of redemption: Yudkin’s cast aside theories are now being realized by modern crusaders like Robert Lustig. In the article, Leslie states: “These sharp fluctuations ...