It wasn’t unreasonable for the Harvard researchers to suggest that the link between sugar and coronary heart disease was unproved.
Advertisement
That’s a key finding of a major review of evidence around sugar consumption and its health impacts, published today by the Royal Society of New Zealand. The scientific process calls for continuing to research, correct and integrate previous knowledge. “They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades”, he said.
The result was an article, published in 1967, which concluded there was “no doubt” that reducing cholesterol and saturated fat was the only dietary guideline necessary to prevent heart disease effectively. The Sugar Research Foundation, according to the JAMA Internal Medicine article’s authors, contributed articles to be reviewed and received drafts.
While the society’s evidence review re-affirmed many widely known facts around large intakes of sugar – notably effects on weight gain, dental decay and links to metabolic diseases like obesity, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and gout – it also found many areas where more research was urgently needed.
In a recently published editorial that accompanied the sugar industry’s analysis, New York University Professor of Nutrition Marion Nestle noted that for decades following the study, health officials and scientists were focused exclusively on reducing saturated fat and not sugar to prevent heart disease.
“The role of sugar in developing obesity is also important, given that New Zealand is now ranked third after the United States and Mexico for rates of obesity, ” Prof Bedford said.
You can thank the sugar industry for that.
Companies including Coca-Cola Co. and Kellogg Co.as well as groups for agricultural products like beef and blueberries regularly fund studies that become a part of scientific literature, are cited by other researchers, and are touted in press releases.
Instead, researchers hampered such advances with their industry-friendly efforts to steer studies to make potentially harmful substances look less harmful.
“Food company sponsorship, whether or not intentionally manipulative, undermines public trust in nutrition science”, wrote Nestle, a longtime critic of industry funding of science.
Advertisement
Many experts agree that sugar is the tobacco of the 21 century, and just as we were lied to then, until the relationship between smoking and cancer could no longer be denied, we are being lied to now.
