Prior to early 2000s when sugar consumption started going down, it was probably a reasonble guess as one of the drivers of increasing disease. But since then sugar consumption has tailed off while disease rates have continued to rise, so I don't think it's plausible anymore.
My bet to flatten the chronic disease curve would be reducing n6 fat consumption, especially from foods fried in vegetable oil.
Provactively, the steep upturn in diabetes rates around 1990 conincides with a broad movement in the fast-food industry to replace animal fats like tallow with vegetable oils.
While I don't disagree that omega-6 oils are suspect - especially when heated/reheated - the evidence for sugar being bad for you is still far greater than the evidence that seed oils are bad for you.
The US State system lends itself to natural experiments so I'm all for iterating on what taxes incentives actually lead to the desired outcomes (higher healthspan and lower healthcare costs).
There very well could be multiple contributing factors to the epidemic- generically if the behavior increases chronic disease burden on the population it needs to be disincentivized via taxes so that you can incentivize moving to alternatives without the negative externalities.
Are there any chains that still use tallow to fry food?
I love fried food and would pay a premium for high quality oil options. Most of the time you don't know what it is, at best it's peanut (five guys). I'd much prefer avocado oil or tallow.
The only one I know of is Popeyes -- they famously never stoped frying their chicken in beef tallow. Probably unhealthy for about a million other reasons, but hey, at least it's not fried in vegetable oil!
https://imgur.com/a/4b0O4AW
Prior to early 2000s when sugar consumption started going down, it was probably a reasonble guess as one of the drivers of increasing disease. But since then sugar consumption has tailed off while disease rates have continued to rise, so I don't think it's plausible anymore.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7666899/
My bet to flatten the chronic disease curve would be reducing n6 fat consumption, especially from foods fried in vegetable oil.
Provactively, the steep upturn in diabetes rates around 1990 conincides with a broad movement in the fast-food industry to replace animal fats like tallow with vegetable oils.
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19900724/1083993/ch...