…of diet-related disease: “The major health hazard from eating too much sugar is tooth decay,” according to the guidelines. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, low-fat foods and diets dominated the American consumer landscape—no one, it seemed, was paying attention to the role of sugar, which was increasingly sneaking its way into a host of products both savory and sweet to make up for the flavor that was lost when fats were removed. Despite all the tubs of margarine, boxes of Snackwell’s cookies, and egg-white omelets, Americans did not get healthier as they astutely tried to avoid fats; rates of obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other diet-related disease have instead spiked as sugar consumption has increased.
The FDA’s new Nutrition Facts requirements—printed on all packaged foods in the U.S.—go into effect in 2018, the label will include a line for “added sugars”; the American Heart Association recently announced strict intake recommendations for children; and soda tax measures have passed in both Berkeley, California, and Philadelphia, with a number of other cities to vote on their own measures in November. In 2016, it isn’t too hard to find someone who will tell you that sugar is addictive, poisonous, or both.