“Current risk assessment studies, WHO, U.S. government agencies, should be sure to look at the scientific evidence and put less weight on industry funded research”, she told ABC News. The incriminating new research is based on thousands of pages of correspondence and other documents in archives at Harvard, the University of IL and other libraries, found by investigator extraordinaire, Cristin E. Kearns, a postdoctoral fellow at U.C.S.F.
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“There are all kinds of ways that you can subtly manipulate the outcome of a study, which industry is very well practiced at”, said the study’s senior author, Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UCSF.
The Sugar Association said it still supports industry-funded research, but admitted it should have been more open about past its involvement.
But even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates back almost 50 years, the revelations are important because the debate about the relative harms of sugar and saturated fat continues today, Glantz said. As a result in this review, the researchers influenced the focus of subsequent research by others to the risks of consuming saturated fats rather than the risk of consuming sugar, according to the JAMA report.
In 1965, Hickson enlisted the Harvard researchers to write a review that would debunk the anti-sugar studies.
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) just revealed that we’ve all been living a sweet lie when it comes to eating healthy.
“The literature review helped shape not only public opinion on what causes heart problems, but also the scientific community’s view of how to evaluate dietary risk factors for heart disease”, lead author Cristin Kearns said.
Some of the letters, about 319, were in correspondence with Roger Adams, an organic chemist at the University of IL who died in 1971, and about 27 documents were in correspondence with David Mark Hegsted, a nutritionist at Harvard University who died in 2009.
In the 1960s, physiologist John Yudkin said added sugars were to blame for the upward trend in heart disease.
At a time when coronary heart disease was on the rise in the United States, researchers began pointing to high-sugar diets as a possible culprit.
Researchers from the UCSF analysed more than 340 correspondences between the sugar lobby and two scientists, Roger Adams and Mark Hegsted. The organization was founded in 1943 by members of the American sugar industry and was dedicated to the scientific study of sugar’s role in food, as well as communicating that role to the public.
Besides paying the scientists, the sugar group chose articles for inclusion in the review, and received drafts before publication, according to the new report.
In response to the new report, the Sugar Association said in a statement that conflict-of-interest policies were less stringent and researchers weren’t required to make financial disclosures back then.
This sugar-coated science has influenced research into nutrition and heart disease, as well as national health recommendations, over the last five decades.
Glantz said the 1967 review helped sidetrack any discussion of the link between heart disease and sugar consumption.
“There is now a considerable body of evidence linking added sugars to hypertension and cardiovascular disease, which is the No. 1 cause of premature death in the developed world”, said study co-author Laura Schmidt.
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In the early 1950s, warning signs appeared that linked sugar consumption to coronary heart disease.
