Conspiracy Theories Poll

[Open Mind]

This conversation reminds me of a colleague who was playing hide and seek to entertain the kids. He stuck a sink unblock suction plunger on his forehead to mimic ...I am a Dalek! exterminate! exterminate!.

However, it left a perfectly round red suction mark on his forehead for days ... everyone he met would ask 'what happened to your head?'

[anonymous]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-making-us-fat

The story begins in 1971. Richard Nixon was facing re-election. The Vietnam war was threatening his popularity at home, but just as big an issue with voters was the soaring cost of food. If Nixon was to survive, he needed food prices to go down, and that required getting a very powerful lobby on board – the farmers.
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Butz pushed farmers into a new, industrial scale of production, and into farming one crop in particular: corn. US cattle were fattened by the immense increases in corn production.
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By the mid-70s, there was a surplus of corn. Butz flew to Japan to look into a scientific innovation that would change everything: the mass development of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), or glucose-fructose syrup as it's often referred to in the UK, a highly sweet, gloppy syrup, produced from surplus corn, that was also incredibly cheap.
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But another health issue was on the radar: heart disease, and in the mid-70s, a fierce debate was raging behind the closed doors of academia over what was causing it. An American nutritionist called Ancel Keys blamed fat, while a British researcher at the University of London Professor John Yudkin, blamed sugar. But Yudkin's work was rubbished by what many believe, including Professor Robert Lustig, one of the world's leading endocrinologists, was a concerted campaign to discredit Yudkin. Much of the criticism came from fellow academics, whose research was aligning far more closely with the direction the food industry was intending to take. Yudkin's colleague at the time, Dr Richard Bruckdorfer at UCL says: "There was a huge lobby from [the food] industry, particularly from the sugar industry, and Yudkin complained bitterly that they were subverting some of his ideas." Yudkin was, Lustig says simply, "thrown under the bus", because there was a huge financial gain to be made by fingering fat, not sugar, as the culprit of heart disease.

The food industry had its eyes on the creation of a new genre of food, something they knew the public would embrace with huge enthusiasm, believing it to be better for their health – "low fat". It promised an immense business opportunity forged from the potential disaster of heart disease. But, says Lustig, there was a problem. "When you take the fat out of a recipe, food tastes like cardboard, and you need to replace it with something – that something being sugar."
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Moreover, there was something else going on. The more sugar we ate, the more we wanted, and the hungrier we became. At New York University, Professor Anthony Sclafani, a nutritionist studying appetite and weight gain, noticed something strange about his lab rats. When they ate rat food, they put on weight normally. But when they ate processed food from a supermarket, they ballooned in a matter of days. Their appetite for sugary foods was insatiable: they just carried on eating.
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The organ of most interest, however, is the gut. According to Schwarz and Sclafani, the gut is a highly complex nervous system. It is the body's "second brain", and this second brain becomes conditioned to wanting more sugar, sending messages back to the brain that are impossible to fight.
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Leptin raises a big question: did the food industry knowingly create foods that were addictive, that would make you feel as though you were never satisfied and always wanted more? Kessler is cautious in his response: "Did they understand the neuroscience? No. But they learned experientially what worked." This is highly controversial. If it could be proved that at that some point the food industry became aware of the long-term, detrimental effects their products were having on the public, and continued to develop and sell them, the scandal would rival that of what happened to the tobacco industry.

[Open Mind]

Yudkin's colleague at the time, Dr Richard Bruckdorfer at UCL says: "There was a huge lobby from [the food] industry, particularly from the sugar industry, and Yudkin complained bitterly that they were subverting some of his ideas." Yudkin was, Lustig says simply, "thrown under the bus", because there was a huge financial gain to be made by fingering fat, not sugar, as the culprit of heart disease.

I have seen a video of Dr Robert Lustig in past ...but 'thrown under a bus' ...does he mean literally?

Anonymous, you might be interested in the 'Coca Cola conspiracy' ... Lustig claims the company put maximizing profits before the wellbeing of their customers.....

What does Coke contain?

- Caffeine, a slightly addictive diuretic that makes Coke drinkers crave more
- High salt, makes Coke drinkers more thirsty, crave more.
- High sugar, knocks blood sugar too high, raises insulin and other responses that make drinkers crave more.

In 1980s, the successful recipe was further altered to 'New Coke' ....what was different according to Lustig? More sugar and salt. Sugar also conceals the taste of salt.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth - YouTube
(Cola section starts about 10 minutes into video)

[Scott]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

I have seen a video of Dr Robert Lustig in past ...but 'thrown under a bus' ...does he mean literally?

Anonymous, you might be interested in the 'Coca Cola conspiracy' ... Lustig claims the company put maximizing profits before the wellbeing of their customers.....

What does Coke contain?

- Caffeine, a slightly addictive diuretic that makes Coke drinkers crave more
- High salt, makes Coke drinkers more thirsty, crave more.
- High sugar, knocks blood sugar too high, raises insulin response, making drinkers crave more.

In 1980s, the successful recipe was further altered to 'New Coke' ....what was different according to Lustig? More sugar and salt. Sugar also conceals the taste of salt.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth - YouTube
(Cola section starts about 10 minutes into video)

New Coke - successful? Yeah, I remember that product and the failure it was. It was not long till they switched back to 'classic coke'.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Scott

New Coke - successful? Yeah, I remember that product and the failure it was. It was not long till they switched back to 'classic coke'.

I didn't say New Coke was successful, I said the successful recipe was further altered to 'New Coke' .....Coke original was losing sales - Pepsi was sweeter.

According to wikipedia '...Coca-Cola's sudden reversal on New Coke led to several rumors and conspiracy theories that have circulated in the years since to explain how a company with the resources and experience of Coca-Cola could have made such an apparently colossal blunder.

Some explanations that have been proffered are:

....... The putative switch was planned all along to cover the change from sugar-sweetened Coke to much less expensive high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a theory that was supposedly given credence by the apparently different taste of Coke Classic when it first hit the market (the U.S. sugar trade association took out a full-page ad lambasting Coke for using HFCS in all bottling of the old formula when it was reintroduced[41]).....'

[Open Mind]

Paqart, if you wish to close this old topic at some point ..... I don't mind either way .... if I recall you aren't keen on conspiracy theories and may prefer the forum focussed on psi

[Arouet]

That's the silliest consipiracy ever if true: the ingredients are listed, they could just change them whenever they wanted.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Arouet

That's the silliest consipiracy ever if true: the ingredients are listed, they could just change them whenever they wanted.

I'm no expert on this ...do remember the original recipe was secret ... I'm not sure if food labelling laws were in place in the 1970s to reveal exactly all it contained. Wikipedia suggested it contained coca derivatives in the original product that could have got in trouble with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

You are also assuming the public would have accepted much cheaper high fructose corn syrup as safe.... if you watch the video Dr Robert Lustig claims it is more harmful than some other forms of sugar.

I don't know.

[Open Mind]

On the subject of food .... here is an interesting documentary/conspiracy on genetically modified foods ....

The World According to Monsanto (FULL LENGTH) - YouTube

[Arouet]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

I'm no expert on this ...do remember the original recipe was secret ... I'm not sure if food labelling laws were in place in the 1970s to reveal exactly all it contained. Wikipedia suggested it contained coca derivatives in the original product that could have got in trouble with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

You are also assuming the public would have accepted much cheaper high fructose corn syrup as safe.... if you watch the video Dr Robert Lustig claims it is more harmful than some other forms of sugar.

I don't know.

I'm saying they didn't need to launch a product designed to fail in order to distract from changing the ingredients. They could just have changed the ingredients (which I'm assuming they did). There's just no need for a conspiracy here.