Today, Explained Sugar crash
109 snips
Mar 15, 2026 
Maya Feller, a Brooklyn dietitian, Kimber Stanhope, a UC Davis metabolism researcher, and David Singerman, a UVA historian of sugar, unpack why sugar is everywhere. They get into sugar’s ties to empire and lobbying. They explore how industry shaped nutrition debates. They also look at fructose, hyperpalatable foods, and why cutting back is more realistic than going cold turkey.
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How Sugar Became Embedded In American Power
- David Singerman says Americans' sugar panic sits atop extraordinary consumption that climbed from about 6 pounds per person in 1800 to 153 in 1999 before easing.
- He ties sugar's rise to empire, enslavement, and even federal dependence on sugar tariffs in the late 1800s.
Big Sugar Borrowed Big Tobacco's Playbook
- Sugar companies sold sugar as health food for decades, then funded science that blamed fat and cholesterol while minimizing sugar's harms.
- David Singerman compares the playbook to tobacco, citing the Sugar Research Foundation and Harvard-linked studies in the 1960s and 70s.
Anti Sugar Politics Unite Unlikely Allies
- Today's anti-sugar coalition mixes left-coded whole-food skepticism with right-wing distrust of elite medicine, creating a strange shared politics around food.
- David Singerman says the movement still faces a powerful industry, especially in Florida, even as per-person sugar use slowly falls.
