Industry documents reveal that the sugar industry began working closely with nutrition scientists in the mid-1960s to single out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease, while downplaying evidence that sugar was a risk factor, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The effort to influence the scientific findings was highly successful — for decades. By the 1980s, few scientists believed that added sugars played a significant role in coronary heart disease, and the first 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans focused on reducing total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol for CHD prevention.
The internal industry documents showed that a sugar industry trade organization recognized as early as 1954 that if Americans adopted low-fat diets, then per-capita consumption of sucrose would increase by more than one-third.
The study was led by Stanton A. Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, and coauthors. They examined internal documents from the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), which later evolved into the Sugar Association, as well as historical reports and other material. The documents included correspondence between the SRF and a Harvard University professor of nutrition who was co-director of the SRF’s first coronary heart disease research program in the 1960s, JAMA said in a statement.
The SRF initiated coronary heart disease research in 1965 and its first project was a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967. SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles to be included and received drafts, while the SRF’s funding and role were not disclosed, according to JAMA.
“As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune,” said Glantz, UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, in a statement. “There are all kinds of ways that you can subtly manipulate the outcome of a study, which industry is very well practiced at.”
NYU nutrition and food studies professor Marion Nestle, in an accompanying commentary in JAMA Internal Medicine, said: “Although studies at that time indicated a relationship between high-sugar diets and CHD risk, the sugar association preferred scientists and policymakers to focus on the role of dietary fat and cholesterol. The association paid the equivalent of more than $48 000 in today’s dollars to three nutrition professors—at Harvard no less—to publish a research review that would refute evidence linking sugars to CHD.”
“This 50-year-old incident may seem like ancient history, but it is quite relevant, not least because it answers some questions germane to our current era. Is it really true that food companies deliberately set out to manipulate research in their favor? Yes, it is, and the practice continues,” Nestle writes.
In a statement, the Sugar Association said the industry “should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities.” At the same time, it said that several decades of research had concluded that sugar “does not have a unique role in heart disease,” according to the New York Times.