With the rise of new calorie-counting dieting fads in the 1950s, the industry responded with a coordinated offensive. Blanketing daily newspapers with advertisements, it argued, successfully it turned out, that since obesity was caused by excess consumption of calories — a calorie was a calorie, dogma at the time — all foods should be restricted equally. Sugar has only 16 calories a teaspoon; why should it be disproportionately demonized?

The 1960s and ’70s saw a similar pattern: another threat in the form of new evidence implicating sugar, another coordinated response.

Just when it looked as if the sugar industry, for all its campaigning, could no longer overrule scientific fact, it was saved by saturated fat. The rising belief that dietary fat consumption was the cause of obesity and heart disease — which had been written about sporadically for decades — suddenly coalesced into fact, shifting the public’s attention away from sugar. This wasn’t planned or paid for. It was just dumb luck. The American Heart Association, long considered unbiased and authoritative, played a crucial role by blaming fat and cholesterol for heart disease. The press, Congress and the Department of Agriculture followed suit.

Then things went totally bananas. High-fructose corn syrup, which is just as deleterious as sugar, got a passing grade from scientists (especially for diabetics!) and went mainstream in the ’80s and ’90s. Same killer, new disguise: Americans were seduced by the sweet stuff all over again. A new category of products presented as health foods, like sports drinks and low-fat yogurt, played a sort of shell game by advertising that the bulk of their calories came from high-fructose corn syrup, without letting on to consumers that this was just another form of sugar. Learning about this made my heart hurt.

So, after decades of scrambled and spurious dietary advice, where are we now? There is a growing consensus in the medical community that a condition known as “metabolic syndrome” is perhaps the greatest predictor of heart disease and diabetes. Signs of the syndrome include obesity, high blood pressure and, more than anything, insulin resistance — which puts a particularly heavy strain on the body.

And what causes insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome? Taubes blames sugar, the “dietary trigger” hiding in plain sight for over half a century. And if he’s right, he could prove its guilt once and for all.