In 1967, a single scientific study revealed the true culprit of the diabetes and heart disease epidemic was sugar. NOT saturated fat or cholesterol. So why wasn’t this information made common knowledge?
They covered it all up. The sugar industry knew the results of these studies would tank sales and cost them billions. So the Sugar Research Foundation paid 3 Harvard Scientists $65,000 each to “prove” sugar was harmless.
Who were the scientists? Some of the most respected nutrition experts in the world. Dr. Frederick Stare was the chairman of Harvard’s Department of Nutrition. Dr. Mark Hegsted was a scientific advisor for the USDA. Dr. Robert Gandy was a pioneer in dietary research.
Hegsted and Stare tore apart studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their reviews were published in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine, which back then did not require researchers to disclose conflicts of interest.
Dr Cristin Kearns, Univ of CA:
— Alan Watson (@DietHeartNews) March 17, 2019
1967 Sugar Foundation paid Harvard’s Fredrick Stare & Mark Hegsted to tear apart studies that implicated sugar in heart disease & instead blame fat & #cholesterol. N Engl J Med: No disclose conflict of interest https://t.co/59fbxMY8qm pic.twitter.com/RsbBvXcbh0
In 2016 Dr. Cristin Kearns discovered papers showing that the sugar industry funded seminal research downplaying the role of sugar in heart disease.
As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. StatNews
That revelation, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, comes from Dr. Cristin Kearns at the University of California, San Francisco, a dentist-turned-researcher who found the sugar industry’s fingerprints while digging through boxes of letters in the basement of a Harvard library.
50 years ago, Big Sugar quietly paid three scientists to point the blame for chronic disease at cholesterol and saturated fat.
— Brett Boettcher (@brettboettcher1) August 7, 2024
Millions of Americans died as a result.
Here’s how Big Sugar has been lying to the American population since 1965: pic.twitter.com/vZzcjWImdb
Abstract
Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study.
The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor.
The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.