But not everybody bought in. One of the most famous dissidents was the prominent British nutritionist John Yudkin (1910–1995). Studying diet and heart disease, he found no relationship between dietary fat and heart disease. He believed that the main culprit of both obesity and heart disease was sugar.9, 10 His 1972 book, Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us, is eerily prescient (and should certainly win the award for Best Book Title Ever). Scientific debate raged back and forth about whether the culprit was dietary fat or sugar.

