In the 1960’s the sugar industry paid scientists to play down the risk of sugar on heart disease and turn the blame on saturated fat! This article appears on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times. These facts were just elucidated by a researcher at the University of California San Francisco and published Monday by JAMA. The most incredible finding is that five decades of research into the role of heart disease and nutrition, including many of today’s dietary recommendations were mostly all shaped by the sugar industry!
The research shows that the trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation known today as the Sugar Foundation, paid three Harvard scientist the equivalent of $50,000 to evaluate fat, sugar and heart disease. The studies were handpicked to minimize the effect sugar had on heart disease and was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. The articles also were casting aspersions against saturated fat! Even though these prejudiced studies were done fifty years ago, there is evidence in more recent reports that the food industry continues to deadly influence research today. Cocoa Cola, for example, has paid millions of dollars in funding to researchers to disprove any association between sugary drinks and obesity. The Associated Press recently reported that the candy industry were funding studies that claimed that kids who ate candy were skinnier than those that did not. One of the lead researchers, Dr. Mark Hegsted who was paid by the sugar industry went on to become head nutritionist at the United States Department of Agriculture. Ultimately he went on to help develop what is today the Food Pyramid.
In the 1960’s compelling evidence was beginning to appear which showed a strong correlation between sugar and heart disease. John Hickson, a top sugar executive documents show, enlisted Dr. Hegsted to begin the study on sugar that would be favorable and be published. At the same time, prominent physiologist Ancel Keys was trying to show saturated fat and cholesterol were the culprits. Hickson told Hegsted to falsify data and to make sure fat is blamed and to exaggerate any of Keys findings. Thus the low-fat diet craze began!
This incredulous finding has led the world’s health astray for over 50 years! It explains why heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and Alzheimers are all rising at remarkable rates! The Food Pyramid needs a major overhaul, and so does the low-fat, high sugar diets that are still promoted today!
