How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat
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camtosh
Posts: 898 Member
The conspiracy theorists were right! Today in the NYTimes:
The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show.
The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry.
“They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an author of the JAMA paper.
The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.
Even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates back nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry has continued to influence nutrition science.
Last year, an article in The New York Times revealed that Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, had provided millions of dollars in funding to researchers who sought to play down the link between sugary drinks and obesity. In June, The Associated Press reported that candy makers were funding studies that claimed that children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who do not.
The Harvard scientists and the sugar executives with whom they collaborated are no longer alive. One of the scientists who was paid by the sugar industry was D. Mark Hegsted, who went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, where in 1977 he helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines. Another was Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, the chairman of Harvard’s nutrition department.
Continue reading the main story
In a statement responding to the JAMA report, the Sugar Association said that the 1967 review was published at a time when medical journals did not typically require researchers to disclose funding sources. The New England Journal of Medicine did not begin to require financial disclosures until 1984.
The industry “should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities,” the Sugar Association statement said. Even so, it defended industry-funded research as playing an important and informative role in scientific debate. It said that several decades of research had concluded that sugar “does not have a unique role in heart disease.”
The revelations are important because the debate about the relative harms of sugar and saturated fat continues today, Dr. Glantz said. For many decades, health officials encouraged Americans to reduce their fat intake, which led many people to consume low-fat, high-sugar foods that some experts now blame for fueling the obesity crisis.
“It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did, because review papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion,” he said.
Dr. Hegsted used his research to influence the government’s dietary recommendations, which emphasized saturated fat as a driver of heart disease while largely characterizing sugar as empty calories linked to tooth decay. Today, the saturated fat warnings remain a cornerstone of the government’s dietary guidelines, though in recent years the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization and other health authorities have also begun to warn that too much added sugar may increase cardiovascular disease risk.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, wrote an editorial accompanying the new paper in which she said the documents provided “compelling evidence” that the sugar industry had initiated research “expressly to exonerate sugar as a major risk factor for coronary heart disease.”
“I think it’s appalling,” she said. “You just never see examples that are this blatant.”
Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said that academic conflict-of-interest rules had changed significantly since the 1960s, but that the industry papers were a reminder of “why research should be supported by public funding rather than depending on industry funding.”
Dr. Willett said the researchers had limited data to assess the relative risks of sugar and fat. “Given the data that we have today, we have shown the refined carbohydrates and especially sugar-sweetened beverages are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but that the type of dietary fat is also very important,” he said.
The JAMA paper relied on thousands of pages of correspondence and other documents that Cristin E. Kearns, a postdoctoral fellow at U.C.S.F., discovered in archives at Harvard, the University of Illinois and other libraries.
The documents show that in 1964, John Hickson, a top sugar industry executive, discussed a plan with others in the industry to shift public opinion “through our research and information and legislative programs.”
At the time, studies had begun pointing to a relationship between high-sugar diets and the country’s high rates of heart disease. At the same time, other scientists, including the prominent Minnesota physiologist Ancel Keys, were investigating a competing theory that it was saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that posed the biggest risk for heart disease.
Mr. Hickson proposed countering the alarming findings on sugar with industry-funded research. “Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors,” he wrote.
In 1965, Mr. Hickson enlisted the Harvard researchers to write a review that would debunk the anti-sugar studies. He paid them a total of $6,500, the equivalent of $49,000 today. Mr. Hickson selected the papers for them to review and made it clear he wanted the result to favor sugar.
Harvard’s Dr. Hegsted reassured the sugar executives. “We are well aware of your particular interest,” he wrote, “and will cover this as well as we can.”
As they worked on their review, the Harvard researchers shared and discussed early drafts with Mr. Hickson, who responded that he was pleased with what they were writing. The Harvard scientists had dismissed the data on sugar as weak and given far more credence to the data implicating saturated fat.
“Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind, and we look forward to its appearance in print,” Mr. Hickson wrote.
After the review was published, the debate about sugar and heart disease died down, while low-fat diets gained the endorsement of many health authorities, Dr. Glantz said.
“By today’s standards, they behaved very badly,” he said.
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Already over 700 comments on the website...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?_r=0
The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show.
The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry.
“They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an author of the JAMA paper.
The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.
Even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates back nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry has continued to influence nutrition science.
Last year, an article in The New York Times revealed that Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, had provided millions of dollars in funding to researchers who sought to play down the link between sugary drinks and obesity. In June, The Associated Press reported that candy makers were funding studies that claimed that children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who do not.
The Harvard scientists and the sugar executives with whom they collaborated are no longer alive. One of the scientists who was paid by the sugar industry was D. Mark Hegsted, who went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture, where in 1977 he helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines. Another was Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, the chairman of Harvard’s nutrition department.
Continue reading the main story
In a statement responding to the JAMA report, the Sugar Association said that the 1967 review was published at a time when medical journals did not typically require researchers to disclose funding sources. The New England Journal of Medicine did not begin to require financial disclosures until 1984.
The industry “should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities,” the Sugar Association statement said. Even so, it defended industry-funded research as playing an important and informative role in scientific debate. It said that several decades of research had concluded that sugar “does not have a unique role in heart disease.”
The revelations are important because the debate about the relative harms of sugar and saturated fat continues today, Dr. Glantz said. For many decades, health officials encouraged Americans to reduce their fat intake, which led many people to consume low-fat, high-sugar foods that some experts now blame for fueling the obesity crisis.
“It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did, because review papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion,” he said.
Dr. Hegsted used his research to influence the government’s dietary recommendations, which emphasized saturated fat as a driver of heart disease while largely characterizing sugar as empty calories linked to tooth decay. Today, the saturated fat warnings remain a cornerstone of the government’s dietary guidelines, though in recent years the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization and other health authorities have also begun to warn that too much added sugar may increase cardiovascular disease risk.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, wrote an editorial accompanying the new paper in which she said the documents provided “compelling evidence” that the sugar industry had initiated research “expressly to exonerate sugar as a major risk factor for coronary heart disease.”
“I think it’s appalling,” she said. “You just never see examples that are this blatant.”
Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said that academic conflict-of-interest rules had changed significantly since the 1960s, but that the industry papers were a reminder of “why research should be supported by public funding rather than depending on industry funding.”
Dr. Willett said the researchers had limited data to assess the relative risks of sugar and fat. “Given the data that we have today, we have shown the refined carbohydrates and especially sugar-sweetened beverages are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but that the type of dietary fat is also very important,” he said.
The JAMA paper relied on thousands of pages of correspondence and other documents that Cristin E. Kearns, a postdoctoral fellow at U.C.S.F., discovered in archives at Harvard, the University of Illinois and other libraries.
The documents show that in 1964, John Hickson, a top sugar industry executive, discussed a plan with others in the industry to shift public opinion “through our research and information and legislative programs.”
At the time, studies had begun pointing to a relationship between high-sugar diets and the country’s high rates of heart disease. At the same time, other scientists, including the prominent Minnesota physiologist Ancel Keys, were investigating a competing theory that it was saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that posed the biggest risk for heart disease.
Mr. Hickson proposed countering the alarming findings on sugar with industry-funded research. “Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors,” he wrote.
In 1965, Mr. Hickson enlisted the Harvard researchers to write a review that would debunk the anti-sugar studies. He paid them a total of $6,500, the equivalent of $49,000 today. Mr. Hickson selected the papers for them to review and made it clear he wanted the result to favor sugar.
Harvard’s Dr. Hegsted reassured the sugar executives. “We are well aware of your particular interest,” he wrote, “and will cover this as well as we can.”
As they worked on their review, the Harvard researchers shared and discussed early drafts with Mr. Hickson, who responded that he was pleased with what they were writing. The Harvard scientists had dismissed the data on sugar as weak and given far more credence to the data implicating saturated fat.
“Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind, and we look forward to its appearance in print,” Mr. Hickson wrote.
After the review was published, the debate about sugar and heart disease died down, while low-fat diets gained the endorsement of many health authorities, Dr. Glantz said.
“By today’s standards, they behaved very badly,” he said.
----
Already over 700 comments on the website...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?_r=0
6
Replies
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Thank you for sharing.
Shocking but, sadly, not surprising. Who can we trust? If top scientists at top institutions can be bought, who can we trust to be both competent and honest?
::flowerforyou::1 -
Can't trust politicians or government either. Everyone is in it for the money.
Nobody cares about your health except you.4 -
Can't ever trust anyone with enough money to buy others...4
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I don't think any of us are surprised by this! It's wonderful that the truth is making it to light though! Maybe it will help others see the truth too!
Thank you for posting!2 -
No surprise here.
Given the number of irrationally angry, irrelevant "you must eat lots of carbs to be healthy" and "eat as much sugar as you want IIFYM" responses to LCHF/keto/paleo/Atkins threads in the main forums...one might wonder whether the Sugar Association (and/or other industry groups) could be having some hidden influence.
I don't have anyone specific in mind, I don't spend much time in the main forums, and I don't have time to analyze posting patterns. But I have suspected for years that not every MFP forum poster is here for the goal of optimizing their weight and health. 
8 -
Midnightgypsy0 wrote: »Can't trust politicians or government either. Everyone is in it for the money.
Nobody cares about your health except you.
Well, I don't have a lab in my basement or any clue how to use it. But I don't believe I'm rolling the dice whenever I come to a crossroads.
Just as there are felonies, misdemeanors, and parking tickets, there are shades of self-interest.
The mere fact that diabetics cannot trust the Sugar Association or ADA does not mean everyone is equally incredible; Dr. Bernstein may make a tidy sum off sales of his book, but I don't plan to burn it!
Nor do I believe NIH funding is as suspect as direct industry support....2 -
Shameful. I won't be surprised if somehow this links back to sugar subsidies. I'll be sad. But I won't be surprised.1
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unfortunately, I think the government is less trustworthy than most industry. After all, they are the ones who pushed through the food pyramid even though the medical professionals told them at the time that low fat was wrong and that eggs were not bad for you.
This is yet another instance where the patient needs to be their own best doctor by being truly informed and in control of his/her own treatment. If I had taken my doctor's advice at face value after getting diagnosed with diabetes, my A1c would likely have continued to climb, and I would be on metformin right now. As it is, it is declining and I take no meds.5 -
cstehansen wrote: »unfortunately, I think the government is less trustworthy than most industry. After all, they are the ones who pushed through the food pyramid even though the medical professionals told them at the time that low fat was wrong and that eggs were not bad for you.
This is yet another instance where the patient needs to be their own best doctor by being truly informed and in control of his/her own treatment. If I had taken my doctor's advice at face value after getting diagnosed with diabetes, my A1c would likely have continued to climb, and I would be on metformin right now. As it is, it is declining and I take no meds.
Are you asserting that government alone, not industry, was responsible for the food pyramid, and that the weight of medical opinion (notwithstanding the views of your doctor and several of mine) was against low-fat diets?
And how on earth is an ignorant, newly-diagnosed T2D (like I was) supposed to figure out which piece of conflicting advice is best for the long haul?
Being your own doctor is good advice, for sure, but it's difficult to put into practice and at best is going to involve at least a few leaps of faith.2 -
I would definitely not put blame on any one entity. Human nature is averse to change. This means as soon as an opinion is formed, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, it is ridiculously hard to get someone to change theirs. The political system is a great example of that where the majority of voters are always going to vote for a certain party even if the candidate were satan himself.
I know being your own doctor is very difficult because it takes really digging a lot deeper than just NYT articles and into actual studies and sometimes looking at who funded the studies, the credentials of those doing the studies, whether it was peer reviewed, etc.
It also takes looking at how treatment is working for you personally. Like I have said on other posts, I started my own version of LC just because it made logical sense and saw great results. After doing research on what the "professionals" recommended, I changed to what they said to do and A1c as well as my fasting and PP readings elevated.
I continued to do research and decided to change to keto and within a couple of days saw my fasting and PP readings drop double digits. I can only assume from that my A1c will be lower at my next appt.
That is my version of being my own doctor.
I do realize most people do not have my tenacity. At work, I often am able to get corporate change not through my authority but just through my unwillingness to give up. That is who I am. It is not always about winning for me. It is that I hate to lose. I will not lose to diabetes. Period.
Since everyone is not like me, there must be people like those in this group who support, educate, provide resources to and otherwise encourage others to make the right choices until they see the results for themselves.
Only when there is a full on grass roots uprising against the bad medicine being peddled will we really see a change. It is starting. In what I can find, this type of treatment for diabetes started getting small amounts of mainstream traction around 2010 and has incrementally been creeping up bit by bit.
It is slow and will likely take decades more before we get true acceptance. Even then it will only be because all the proponents of the current status quo are blind, have limbs amputated and are too busy with their dialysis treatment to continue arguing with those of us who have successfully beaten diabetes and are healthy.3 -
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WUlE1VHGA40
Dr. Thompson of Sloan Kettering cancer center is not confused about carbs/cancer relationships starting at 25:00. Catch his remarks about the amount of vitamins we may need to take in replying to a student at the last 30 seconds of the video after he got off the podium.
In short we are clueless on how many to talk and the guidelines of yesterday year are really without meaning to prevent cancer/give best health.
This video has been posted before but is a left handed Keto endorsement by a leading MD/Cancer Hospital.
Thanks @camtosh for sharing the link.3 -
I was just coming to post this same article.2
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Thanks for the link!
Another article by a great scientist (Richard David Feinman) re: Keto and cancer
https://feinmantheother.com/5 -
Midnightgypsy0 wrote: »Can't trust politicians or government either. Everyone is in it for the money.
Nobody cares about your health except you.
Amen to that @Midnightgypsy0! I came to the same conclusion about my health very shortly after after starting my lifestyle change a couple of years ago. It's definitely of those sad but true things.3 -
This is why younger generations turn to the internet for answers. You can't trust what's in the mainstream media anymore, it's all bought and paid for by corporations and outside interests. I'm so thankful to Reddit /r/keto and this MFP community for helping me along my journey and providing some real knowledge. All the discussions about Gary Taubes and why we get fat, wheat belly, plus these boards all combined all provided such a wealth of support and knowledge. I'm not sure how much longer it will last though because they are starting to realize that people are getting their information from outside sources and will want to block those sources.
But that's a rant for another time and another thread.
F the sugar industry! Low carb/Atkins/Keto - they were all right all along.1 -
castlerobber wrote: »No surprise here.
Given the number of irrationally angry, irrelevant "you must eat lots of carbs to be healthy" and "eat as much sugar as you want IIFYM" responses to LCHF/keto/paleo/Atkins threads in the main forums...one might wonder whether the Sugar Association (and/or other industry groups) could be having some hidden influence. I don't have anyone specific in mind, I don't spend much time in the main forums, and I don't have time to analyze posting patterns. But I have suspected for years that not every MFP forum poster is here for the goal of optimizing their weight and health.
Are you implying there is a "correct the record" type of group for the sugar association that combs health and fitness boards trying to debunk anyone saying that sugar is bad?
Interesting. That's a scary thought.0 -
Please remember that we aren't supposed to be talking about the main forums. In any case, I highly doubt there is any astroturfing going on there. Nutrition is confusing and the CICO message says that where calories come from doesn't matter as much as their total number. For what it is worth, I have been accused of being a meat-industry shill. So, it goes both ways.0
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When I think of all the damage that the sugar industry has done, physically, mentally, and financially, I think they should be sued just like the tobacco industry, and perhaps taxed on the end product with the proceeds going to pay for the damage they caused. Right now, Medicare is going to be wiped out with the increase in diseases caused by insulin resistance. You can argue that people choose what they eat, but with the nutritional guidelines in the past 50 years, were we ever really free to choose what we fed our families without being subject to threats of child neglect?
Yeah, and we are subsiding Big Sugar, with our taxes. That needs to stop.2 -
When I think of all the damage that the sugar industry has done, physically, mentally, and financially, I think they should be sued just like the tobacco industry, and perhaps taxed on the end product with the proceeds going to pay for the damage they caused. Right now, Medicare is going to be wiped out with the increase in diseases caused by insulin resistance. You can argue that people choose what they eat, but with the nutritional guidelines in the past 50 years, were we ever really free to choose what we fed our families without being subject to threats of child neglect?
Yeah, and we are subsiding Big Sugar, with our taxes. That needs to stop.
What we really need to do is stop subsidizing both sugar and corn. There is no need to add a tax (and more inefficient gov't bureaucracy) when we could just stop giving them money up front with the same effect. This would drive up cost of sugar and HFCS (which is worse than regular sugar).4 -
The government guarantees the price of sugar and as a result sugar already costs more in the States then in other countries (hence HFCS being cheaper, plus the corn subsidies). So, if the government eliminates price supports, sugar will just get cheaper, hence my idea about sugar taxes. If sugar prices fall too low, maybe we will just import the sugar from Cuba or Brazil and end the cane/beet farming here. Admittedly, it is more complex than that and greater minds than mine will have to debate on it. Speaking as a South Florida native, the disaster to the Everglades and surrounding environment is horrendous. You should smell the air when they are burning the fields.0
