Listening to those comments on the products(as well as the incredible yucky side effects which reduce the quality of life) makes me wonder if any studies have shown that reducing cholesterol etc has ever been proven the reduce strokes or heart attacks.
That's an interesting question.
I'm still reading and learning, but I'm going down the same path you are in my questioning. What I've learned is that much of this controversy goes back to the work of Ancel Keys, who studied the effects of fat and cholesterol on health and cardio-vascular disease. He was the creator of the K-ration field meals used by the US military during the Korean war and the Mediterranean diet.
Keys' study on cardio-vascular disease and diet, called the Seven Country Study, alleged correlations between high cholesterol rates and CVD using American business executives. It was one of the first, if not the first, study on CVD. His study blamed high rates of serum cholesterol, caused by high intake of saturated fatty acids, was to blame for the increased incidence of CVD in America as compared to several other countries.
Coronary Heart Disease among Minnesota Business and Professional Men Followed Fifteen Years -- KEYS et al. 28 (3): 381 -- Circulation
Keys seems to be the father of the low-fat diet and lifestyle that eventually opened the door to all of the sugary carbs that we've been talking about here. If we believe that dietary fat is not the completely evil substance that it has been characterized as - and we've been fooled into making ourselves fatter and sicker - Keys wouldn't deserve all of the blame, but he should get credit as the progenitor.
I don't claim that Keys was completely misguided - I don't have the expertise to claim that. But a lot of other scientists have been calling Keys everything from "just plain wrong" to a liar who manipulated his findings. The criticism ranges from claims that the correlations Keys found becomes very weak once data from more countries is introduced into the statistical study, to accusations that he cherry-picked data to the point that the Seven Country study is worthless.
Google "Ancel Keys was wrong" and look at some of the results.
Anyway, I found this comparison that was fun and interesting. It's anecdotal, but thought provoking.
Keys nearly lived to 101 years of age. Here he is the month before he died:
Jack LaLanne is five years younger than Keys in this picture taken recently:
Which guy do I want to look like if I live to age 90+?
I want to be Jack, baby!
I remember seeing Jack LaLanne's exercise show in black and white years ago when I was a kid. Here is what Jack preached on diet. The first couple of minutes are about alcohol, interestingly enough, and then he goes in on sugar and it's effects on health. Interesting to hear what he says about the food companies and added sugar.
YouTube - Jack Lalanne - Sugarholics
Did Keys lie to us while LaLanne has been preaching the gospel? I'm not sure, but at the very least Keys studies have been used to create the low-fat high-carbohydrate diet that seems to be fattening people up for the slaughter. Good cholesterol lowering medication can help with the CVD issue (and I suspect much high-cholesterol problems are caused by hereditary factors and aggravated by diet) while we work on reducing the obesity and diabetes caused by the low-fat high-carb diet.