It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea (Gwen Moritz Editor's Note)

I wish I were as fat as I was the first time I thought I was fat, so something in Senior Editor Mark Friedman’s health column last week jumped out at me: Dr. Bruce Murphy, CEO of the Arkansas Heart Hospital, included artificial sweeteners in a list of factors contributing to the obesity epidemic that led his company to add weight-loss surgery to its menu of services. Last year, The New York Times revealing that, in the 1960s when I was a tot, the sugar industry actually paid researchers “to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead.” As a result of this made-to-order science, the American diet shifted to “low-fat, high-sugar foods that some experts now blame for fueling the obesity crisis.” So things we were doing to be slimmer and healthier — artificial sweeteners in our coffee and soft drinks, low-fat variations on pantry staples — were really stimulating our desire for sweets and thus having the opposite effect. Or so we are now led to believe. Who knows what we’ll believe in another 30 or 50 years? I’ve started to think that “It seemed like such a good idea” may be the American epitaph, and manipulating our diets wasn’t even the start. I recently watched PBS’ “American Experience” documentary on Rachel L. Carson and her bombshell nonfiction bestseller from 1962, “Silent Spring.” For my generation, the letters DDT a...
Source: Arkansas Business - Health Care - Category: American Health Source Type: news