“Yet, health policy documents are still inconsistent in citing heart disease risk as a health outcome of added sugars consumption”.
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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. Nutrition research was showing that both were factors, until a $48,000 check (in 2016 dollars) was given to Dr. Fredrick Stare and Dr. Robert McGandy (both deceased) by a group called Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) to study the link between sugar and heart disease.
Early signs sugar plays a key role in heart disease emerged in the 1950s – a stance now widely accepted.
The new paper was led by Cristin Kearns, a postdoctoral researcher at the UCSF School of Dentistry, who collected letters dating from 1959 to 1971 between executives at the Sugar Research Foundation and various scientists. Sugar is the number one ingredient that dietitians and nutritionists want you to nix, and it’s being blamed for bad skin, messed-up metabolisms, and increased risk of obesity and heart disease. They also concluded that sucrose consumption should not be considered in a patient’s risk assessment for developing heart disease.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health has more about sugar and health. As per the analysis, the researchers exaggerated the literature’s consistency on fat and cholesterol, while distracting readers from studies on sugar.
Monday’s report cites the industry continued to fund research that sidestepped sugar’s effects on health, including a 1970s review influencing the 1976 US Food and Drug Administration evaluation of the safety of sugar.
“They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades”, said Stanton Glantz, author of the study.
The UCSF team disputes that, noting health policy has since begun to address sugar’s role in heart disease. She said she hopes the new report will highlight the “implications for conflict of interest and industry-funded research”.
The Sugar Association gave the following statement to Reuters Health: “We acknowledge that the Sugar Research Foundation should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities, however, when the studies in question were published funding disclosures and transparency standards were not the norm they are today”.
SRF’s vice president and director of research John Hickson said the Sugar Research Foundation “could embark on a major program” to squash “negative attitudes toward sugar”.
“It is challenging for us to comment on events that allegedly occurred 60 years ago”. The following year, Eisenhower was elected to a second term, and America’s focus on heart health – and, specifically, what constituted a heart-healthy diet – burgeoned.
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The sugar-funded project in question was a literature review, examining a variety of studies and experiments. Nayak is soon to be an assistant professor and hospitalist physician at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and is now working in the ABC News Medical Unit.
