In the 1960’s, before conflict of interest disclosure was required, the sugar industry sponsored research promoting dietary fat as an important cause of coronary heart disease, and downplaying the role of sugar, according to a special report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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The Sugar Research Foundation paid the modern equivalent of US$50,000 to fund the project, which argued cholesterol – not sucrose – was the sole relevant factor in studying and preventing coronary heart disease.
The SRF’s vice president and director of research, John Hickson, proposed that the SRF “could embark on a major program” to counter “negative attitudes toward sugar”.
“However, by taking industry funding for the review, and having regular communications during the review with the sugar industry”, Willett acknowledged, it “put him [Hegsted] in a position where his conclusions could be questioned”.
In April 1966, Hegsted wrote to the sugar trade group to report that his review had been delayed because researchers in Iowa had produced new evidence linking sugar to coronary heart disease. The study examined numerous other literature and experiments concerning the development of heart disease. Their interest is in the process. It’s not like the entire industry can go back and change what that 1967 report erroneously says, but the existing leadership at the Sugar Association published a statement acknowledging the unethical report. Other organizations were also advocating concerns about fat, they note.
The Harvard scientists and the sugar executives with whom they collaborated are no longer alive.
For one thing, there’s motivation and intent. Now we know that this low-fat, high-carb diet has clearly been a disaster for American health, which is why the Guidelines, just previous year, dropped it. Excessive sugar consumption has been linked to America’s obesity epidemic and the vigorous rise of type 2 diabetes in the last several decades. “Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors”. They wound up paying approximately $50,000 in today’s dollars for the research.
“These tactics are strikingly similar to what we saw in the tobacco industry in the same era”, said Stanton Glantz of the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.
“We are well aware of your particular interest in carbohydrate and will cover this as well as we can”, Hegsted replied, according to Kearns.
In 1967 NEJM published a two-part review article, “Dietary Fats, Carbohydrates and Atherosclerotic Disease” with no mention of the SRF’s support and participation.
However, the research that condemned fat while ignoring the role of sugar is now widely seen as misguided. In some cases the scientists alleged investigator incompetence or flawed methodology.
“It is always appropriate to question the validity of individual studies”, Kearns said in an email.
As a result, consumers may have been misled for decades into thinking only saturated fat harmed the heart, and not candies, the researchers said. Experimental studies were dismissed for being too dissimilar to real life.
“Added sugars contribute to a diet that is high in calories but low in nutrients”.
For an in-depth look on the latest news, check out the full JAMA article here, the Times writeup about it here, and a statement in response to the JAMA paper from the Sugar Association.
Together, these documents tell a story of an industry terrified of recent scientific discoveries and scrambling to keep sugar sales on the rise, culminating in a heavily skewed study published in the New England Journal Of Medicine – without disclosure of the sugar industry’s funding or role.
“This is a very common practice in industry-funded research”.
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Just previous year, the media learned that Coca-Cola was founding several studies worth over millions of dollars to disproof the link between obesity rates and sugar drinks, just a few months after the company had told the public there was no relation between sugar and obesity. However, the trade-group went on to question the UCSF researchers’ motives in digging up the issue and reframing the past events to “conveniently align with the now trending anti-sugar narrative”.
