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On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 10:18 PM Suzanne L <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing!!!
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paleolithic Eating Support List <[log in to unmask]> on
> behalf of Don Wiss <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, September 12, 2016 7:30:17 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat
>
> From:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html
>
> How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat
>
> By ANAHAD O'CONNOR  SEPT. 12, 2016
>
> The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link
> between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the
> culprit instead, newly released historical documents show.
>
> The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a
> researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and
> published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades
> of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including
> many of today's dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped
> by the sugar industry.
>
> "They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,"
> said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an
> author of the JAMA paper.
>
> The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research
> Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard
> scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today's dollars to
> publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease.
> The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group,
> and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England
> Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart
> health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.
>
> Even though the influence-peddling revealed in the documents dates
> back nearly 50 years, more recent reports show that the food industry
> has continued to influence nutrition science.
>
> Last year, an article in The New York Times revealed that Coca-Cola,
> the world's largest producer of sugary beverages, had provided
> millions of dollars in funding to researchers who sought to play down
> the link between sugary drinks and obesity. In June, The Associated
> Press reported that candy makers were funding studies that claimed
> that children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who do not.
>
> The Harvard scientists and the sugar executives with whom they
> collaborated are no longer alive. One of the scientists who was paid
> by the sugar industry was D. Mark Hegsted, who went on to become the
> head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture,
> where in 1977 he helped draft the forerunner to the federal
> government's dietary guidelines. Another scientist was Dr. Fredrick
> J. Stare, the chairman of Harvard's nutrition department.
>
> In a statement responding to the JAMA report, the Sugar Association
> said that the 1967 review was published at a time when medical
> journals did not typically require researchers to disclose funding
> sources. The New England Journal of Medicine did not begin to require
> financial disclosures until 1984.
>
> The industry "should have exercised greater transparency in all of
> its research activities," the Sugar Association statement said. Even
> so, it defended industry-funded research as playing an important and
> informative role in scientific debate. It said that several decades
> of research had concluded that sugar "does not have a unique role in
> heart disease."
>
> The revelations are important because the debate about the relative
> harms of sugar and saturated fat continues today, Dr. Glantz said.
> For many decades, health officials encouraged Americans to reduce
> their fat intake, which led many people to consume low-fat,
> high-sugar foods that some experts now blame for fueling the obesity
> crisis.
>
> "It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did, because review
> papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent
> journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion," he said.
>
> Dr. 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. Today, the saturated fat warnings remain a
> cornerstone of the government's dietary guidelines, though in recent
> years the American Heart Association, the World Health Organization
> and other health authorities have also begun to warn that too much
> added sugar may increase cardiovascular disease risk.
>
> Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public
> health at New York University, wrote an editorial accompanying the
> new paper in which she said the documents provided "compelling
> evidence" that the sugar industry had initiated research "expressly
> to exonerate sugar as a major risk factor for coronary heart disease."
>
> "I think it's appalling," she said. "You just never see examples that
> are this blatant."
>
> Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the
> Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said that academic
> conflict-of-interest rules had changed significantly since the 1960s,
> but that the industry papers were a reminder of "why research should
> be supported by public funding rather than depending on industry funding."
>
> Dr. Willett said the researchers had limited data to assess the
> relative risks of sugar and fat. "Given the data that we have today,
> we have shown the refined carbohydrates and especially
> sugar-sweetened beverages are risk factors for cardiovascular
> disease, but that the type of dietary fat is also very important," he said.
>
> The JAMA paper relied on thousands of pages of correspondence and
> other documents that Cristin E. Kearns, a postdoctoral fellow at
> U.C.S.F., discovered in archives at Harvard, the University of
> Illinois and other libraries.
>
> The documents show that in 1964, John Hickson, a top sugar industry
> executive, discussed a plan with others in the industry to shift
> public opinion "through our research and information and legislative
> programs."
>
> At the time, studies had begun pointing to a relationship between
> high-sugar diets and the country's high rates of heart disease. At
> the same time, other scientists, including the prominent Minnesota
> physiologist Ancel Keys, were investigating a competing theory that
> it was saturated fat and dietary cholesterol that posed the biggest
> risk for heart disease.
>
> Mr. Hickson proposed countering the alarming findings on sugar with
> industry-funded research. "Then we can publish the data and refute
> our detractors," he wrote.
>
> In 1965, Mr. Hickson enlisted the Harvard researchers to write a
> review that would debunk the anti-sugar studies. He paid them a total
> of $6,500, the equivalent of $49,000 today. Mr. Hickson selected the
> papers for them to review and made it clear he wanted the result to
> favor sugar.
>
> Harvard's Dr. Hegsted reassured the sugar executives. "We are well
> aware of your particular interest," he wrote, "and will cover this as
> well as we can."
>
> As they worked on their review, the Harvard researchers shared and
> discussed early drafts with Mr. Hickson, who responded that he was
> pleased with what they were writing. The Harvard scientists had
> dismissed the data on sugar as weak and given far more credence to
> the data implicating saturated fat.
>
> "Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind, and we look
> forward to its appearance in print," Mr. Hickson wrote.
>
> After the review was published, the debate about sugar and heart
> disease died down, while low-fat diets gained the endorsement of many
> health authorities, Dr. Glantz said.
>
> "By today's standards, they behaved very badly," he said.
>