The Sweet Trap in the History of US Dietary Guidelines | Grandma Kouzi
7 January 2026: the first big piece of news for foodies this year—the US has released a new version of its Dietary Guidelines. It has caused a stir, with opinions divided and debate raging. The most obvious changes are clear at a glance in this image.
“The old Dietary Guidelines guaranteed a ‘high incidence of cardiovascular and endocrine diseases’—that’s where the massive profits for pharmaceutical companies and hospitals come from!”
Today, I’ll take this opportunity to revisit the history behind the US Dietary Guidelines.
I. From Fraudulent Academic Papers to the First US Dietary Guidelines
Before the first set of guidelines was issued on 23 January 1980, the US Senate’s ‘Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs’ had published ‘Dietary Goals’ in 1977. Although an official document, it was considered to lack professional rigour. Consequently, D. Mark Hegsted, a professor of nutrition at Harvard University and a PhD in biochemistry, joined the USDA in 1978 as an administrator for the Department of Human Nutrition to draft the first US Dietary Guidelines.
One would assume that as a professional, Mark Hegsted was perfectly suited for the task. Yet, those pursuing science and justice fell precisely into a sweet trap—one set by the food industry, specifically the sugar sector.
The Sugar Association was founded in 1943. In that era, the US food industry evolved from fragmented meat-processing firms into multinational giants with vast supply chains, creating an industry structure centred on ‘meat processing’ and ‘food processing’.
Initially, the association was called the ‘Sugar Research Foundation’, and it was renamed the ‘Sugar Association’ in the seventies. The reason for the name change is also interesting; it was allegedly ‘to more broadly represent the interests of US sugar producers and consumers’. However, those in the know understand that this association clearly represented the interests of the producers.
Funded by sugar-related enterprises, the Sugar Association sponsored a vast amount of research into heart disease. They did this not because food tycoons had suddenly developed a passion for medicine and decided to save lives, but to use ‘scientific research’ to prove that sugar was not the culprit behind heart disease. Ultimately, the core goal of the association’s funding was to divert public attention—specifically, to shift the blame for heart disease, the leading killer of Americans, from sugar to fat.
The context of the 1940s and 50s must be considered. At the time, heart disease was the number one killer in the US, and people were terrified of the prospect. In 1955, the then-President Eisenhower, a 64-year-old World War II hero, suffered a sudden heart attack. For six or seven weeks, Vice President Nixon acted as president. This event pushed the ‘heart disease panic’ to its peak.
Post-war America began to lead the world; the best opportunities and the most money were in the US. It was only natural that Americans became unprecedentedly terrified of death. In an age of prosperity, who wouldn’t want to live longer and enjoy more? Research into heart disease attracted national attention and the country’s finest scholars.
Unbeknownst to the public, however, this research also attracted the attention of the Sugar Association. From its inception, the association funded studies on the link between cardiovascular disease and diet. At the time, heart disease was rampant, and scientific research was hunting for the killer. If sugar were definitively named and shamed, how would the sugar barons—with their lucrative futures—cope?
In that era, the US food processing industry (including sugar, meat, and dairy) accounted for about 2-3% of GDP, but represented as much as 15-20% of the manufacturing sector, serving as a vital pillar of post-war industrialisation. Crucially, the industry had previously been dominated by meat processing, with canned foods growing rapidly during the two World Wars. The post-war growth engine was the sugar industry and its related food processing sectors. The thriving sugar elite needed scientific research to tell the American people: the real culprit behind heart disease wasn’t sugar, but its neighbour, fat.
Money can make the devil grind the mill, and in this instance, science was that devil. In 1967, three Harvard professors published a paper in the world’s leading medical journal, *The New England Journal of Medicine*, claiming that sugars were unrelated to heart disease.
Among the three Harvard professors who betrayed human health for a little money were two very prominent figures. One was Frederick Stare, founder of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, who had promoted public health strategies such as regular exercise and water fluoridation. The other was Mark Hegsted, the drafter of the US Dietary Guidelines mentioned earlier. In 1980, the first US Dietary Guidelines were released. Note the key point: ‘Given the increasing threat of heart disease to the American people, the public is reminded to reduce the intake of saturated fats for the sake of their lives.’
Nowadays, it is common knowledge that the human heart is fragile and requires careful care. Excessive sugar and fat are the primary factors triggering heart disease. While sugar and fat are effectively joint champions—with sugar actually performing ‘better’ across many indicators—only fat was pushed onto the podium at the awards ceremony.
Attributing heart disease to fat was a ‘major achievement’ engineered by the sugar lobby in partnership with scientists. Guided by such research and guidelines, the fat intake of Americans decreased by 25% over half a century. By 2016, heart disease remained the primary killer of Americans, while obesity and diabetes were rapidly catching up. The culprit was that—sweet sugar. Life for Americans has been far too sweet.
II. A Life in the Limelight: Ancel Keys’ Posthumous Fall from Grace
This research was led by Ancel Keys of the University of Minnesota. Holding doctorates from both the University of California and the University of Cambridge, Keys was a highly respected authority in the interdisciplinary fields of nutrition and physiology. Beyond the “Seven Countries Study”, he was a major proponent of the “Mediterranean diet” and once appeared on the cover of *Time* magazine for his research on cholesterol.
The data from the “Seven Countries Study” suggested that fat was the primary culprit behind heart disease. However, this scientist failed to mention that his research actually involved sampling populations from 22 different countries. Why, then, was the published paper a “Seven Countries Study”? Because he discarded the data from 15 countries that did not support his conclusion, selecting only the seven that best aligned with his hypothesis: the US, the UK, the Soviet Union, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, and Greece.
Furthermore, within the samples of these seven countries, he cherry-picked the data that favoured his narrative and introduced “fictitious statistical corrections” into the model to exaggerate the correlation between fat and heart disease. Out of an initial survey sample of 12,770 people, this supposedly influential epidemiological study ended up using only 499…
Keys’ academic misconduct extended beyond the fabrication of the “Seven Countries Study” to the active suppression and silencing of dissenting voices.
While the “Seven Countries Study” was at the height of its influence, John Yudkin of the University of London published a contrarian view: that the incidence of heart disease correlated more strongly with sugar consumption than with fat. Dr Yudkin, a professor of physiology and nutrition at the University of London and an early advocate of the dangers of sugar in the 20th century, published *Pure, White and Deadly* in 1972, detailing the relationship between sugar and cardiovascular disease, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.
The pro-sugar lobby and Ancel Keys conspired to block Yudkin, going as far as to smear him by claiming he had taken kickbacks from meat and dairy companies. This left the former leading British scientist with a ruined reputation—a professional annihilation of sorts. Sponsors withdrew their funding and refused to support the academic conferences he convened; research journals refused to publish his papers; research institutions stopped inviting him to seminars; the British Sugar Board criticised him for being “too emotional”; and his book was ridiculed as science fiction…
Stymied in his career, Yudkin spent his later years in melancholy, passing away at the age of 77. Keys, by contrast, enjoyed a life of prestige and peace until the end. Born in January 1904 and passing away in November 2004, he was a centenarian who lived to be over a hundred years old.
Keys was a major proponent of the Mediterranean diet and practised what he preached. While I cannot find the specific recipes this centenarian followed, based on the general principles of the Mediterranean diet, his plate certainly contained no added sugar—unlike the overly sweet diet of the American public.
III. The Evolution of Dietary Guidelines
By the 1990s, the hierarchy of the US food industry had shifted from traditional meat processing, sugar, and canned foods to sugar, meat, and beverages. Concepts like “low fat” and “low cholesterol” became ubiquitous, and the market share of related products surged as consumers were lured by the taste of “low-fat” foods. With scientists “researching” this way, the state pushing the agenda, the advertising industry promoting it in unison, and corporations following suit, more sugar was added to compensate for the loss of flavour caused by the removal of fat. This quietly ushered humanity into a new era of low-fat, high-sugar diets, characterised by widespread obesity and a high prevalence of diabetes.
As the new century dawned, the situation began to shift. The US Dietary Guidelines moved from “nutrient restriction” to “food patterns”, emphasising the reduction of processed foods and the consumption of whole foods. The guidelines published in 2020 began to “limit added sugars” and address the issue of “ultra-processed foods”. Unlike previous guidelines that were as thick as books, this year’s guidelines are a mere ten pages long. The release of the new guidelines caused a stir; interpretations vary, but the debate surrounding them has far exceeded the actual content of the document.
Returning to the subject of sugar: although the previous US Dietary Guidelines were already controlling added sugars, they still permitted added sugar in foods for children over the age of two. In the past, the language regarding sugar was typically a “suggestion to reduce”, with the limit set at “added sugars < 10% of total daily calories”. This current version, however, takes an uncompromising stance on added sugar: “no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is recommended, nor do they belong in a healthy or nutritious diet”. It further suggests that added sugars be completely avoided during infancy and early childhood, and that children aged 5–10 consume no added sugars at all.
I agree that sugar should not be viewed as part of a healthy or nutritious diet, though I have doubts about the feasibility of this—a topic for another article, as I cannot expand on it here.
Almost every major update to the dietary guidelines triggers a wave of transformation among food companies. Because the US Dietary Guidelines continued to reinforce the notion that “low fat = healthy”, the food industry completed a commercial translation of this concept. “Healthy foods” such as “low-fat yoghurt” and “sugar-free drinks” emerged, leading a new trend of revenue growth.
Currently, the food industry accounts for approximately 3.5% of the US GDP, a share that has remained steady with a slight increase. However, the total volume of the US GDP is incomparable to what it once was. The top food company during the era of the first dietary guidelines had annual revenues of around ten billion dollars; today, PepsiCo exceeds 90 billion dollars. The influence of these mega-food corporations on health and fashion trends has long since swept the globe, and they can rapidly adjust their product structures using their formidable R&D and capital strength. One wonders what new tricks they will employ this time to seize the next high ground.
Since dietary guidelines change every few years and are not entirely reliable, what then is the secret to a healthy diet for the average person? To indulge in a bit of self-promotion, I invite readers to click the link below to see the healthy eating tips I have shared previously!
Editor: Xiao Dan