The Sugar Industry Shifted the Blame to Fat, and it was Swallowed for a Time, By Mrs. Vera West
There is an excellent video by Jimmy Dore on the myth of cholesterol, and the policy of use of various cholesterol-lowering drugs to deal with what he argues is a non-problem, in a sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iom8WRaejMc. This eye-opening video, which does have one F-bomb, as Jimmy gets angry with Big Pharma, so be warned, makes the point that as soon as there is a drug for some condition, the definition of what that condition is, get lowered so many millions more people can be given the wonder drug, increasing the profits of Big Pharma. A blood pressure of I think 120/70 is expected now by GPs, but back in 2014 and before that, a higher blood pressure was accepted as normal, which is not to say that this may or may not be correct medical judgment, but why did the situation change, when something like this could have been known previously?
In the Jimmy Dore video, he mentions that the US sugar industry campaigned to get fats targeted as the culprit in cardio-vascular disease, and surprisingly enough, this has been documented by an article in a leading medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The "Sugar Research Foundation wanted to "refute" concerns about sugar's possible role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding. The sugar-funded project in question was a literature review, examining a variety of studies and experiments. It suggested there were major problems with all the studies that implicated sugar, and concluded that cutting fat out of American diets was the best way to address coronary heart disease."
Thus, the research should have had the disclosure of funding by the sugar industry which would have put critics on the alert to possible bias, and which would have given more scrutiny of the paper, we would suppose. But this was not done, and the momentum against fats was established, which has only in more recent times been debunked. It is a tale of caution about medical research, and who pays for it. It certainly raises doubts about much of it, being funded by Big Pharma. He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255#google_vignette
"In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The article draws on internal documents to show that an industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to "refute" concerns about sugar's possible role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding.
The sugar-funded project in question was a literature review, examining a variety of studies and experiments. It suggested there were major problems with all the studies that implicated sugar, and concluded that cutting fat out of American diets was the best way to address coronary heart disease.
The authors of the new article say that for the past five decades, the sugar industry has been attempting to influence the scientific debate over the relative risks of sugar and fat.
"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," co-author Stanton Glantz told The New York Times.
Money on the line
In the article, published Monday, authors Glantz, Cristin Kearns and Laura Schmidt aren't trying make the case for a link between sugar and coronary heart disease. Their interest is in the process. They say the documents reveal the sugar industry attempting to influence scientific inquiry and debate.
The researchers note that they worked under some limitations — "We could not interview key actors involved in this historical episode because they have died," they write. Other organizations were also advocating concerns about fat, they note.
There's no evidence that the SRF directly edited the manuscript published by the Harvard scientists in 1967, but there is "circumstantial" evidence that the interests of the sugar lobby shaped the conclusions of the review, the researchers say.
For one thing, there's motivation and intent. In 1954, the researchers note, the president of the SRF gave a speech describing a great business opportunity.
If Americans could be persuaded to eat a lower-fat diet — for the sake of their health — they would need to replace that fat with something else. America's per capita sugar consumption could go up by a third.
But in the '60s, the SRF became aware of "flowing reports that sugar is a less desirable dietary source of calories than other carbohydrates," as John Hickson, SRF vice president and director of research, put it in one document.
He recommended that the industry fund its own studies — "Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors."
The next year, after several scientific articles were published suggesting a link between sucrose and coronary heart disease, the SRF approved the literature-review project. It wound up paying approximately $50,000 in today's dollars for the research.
One of the researchers was the chairman of Harvard's Public Health Nutrition Department — and an ad hoc member of SRF's board.
"A different standard" for different studies
Glantz, Kearns and Schmidt say many of the articles examined in the review were hand-selected by SRF, and it was implied that the sugar industry would expect them to be critiqued.
In a letter, SRF's Hickson said that the organization's "particular interest" was in evaluating studies focused on "carbohydrates in the form of sucrose."
"We are well aware," one of the scientists replied, "and will cover this as well as we can."
The project wound up taking longer than expected, because more and more studies were being released that suggested sugar might be linked to coronary heart disease. But it was finally published in 1967.
Hickson was certainly happy with the result: "Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind and we look forward to its appearance in print," he told one of the scientists."
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