Sugar Companies Shifted Focus to Fat as Heart Harm

Analysis of 50-year old documents suggests the sugar industry manipulated research to play down the harmful effects of sugar on the heart, a new study says.

The sugar industry paid Harvard University nutrition scientists to build a case against saturated fat and cholesterol as primary causes of heart disease while downplaying the negative health effects of sugary foods and beverages, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

As a result, consumers may have been misled for decades into thinking only saturated fat harmed the heart, and not sweets, the researchers said. During that time, obesity and associated ills like diabetes reached alarming levels in the United States.

“There are all kinds of ways that you can subtly manipulate the outcome of a study, which industry is very well practiced at,” said the study’s senior author, Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UCSF.

“As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune,” Glantz said in a university news release.
The Sugar Association said it still supports industry-funded research, but admitted it should have been more open about its past involvement.

For its report, the UCSF team searched public archives for internal corporate documents from the sugar industry.

According to their analysis, the sugar industry was aware by the 1950s that if people cut fat out of their diets, their sugar intake would jump about 30%.

Around this time, studies began to warn of a link between sugar and risk factors for heart disease, like high cholesterol and triglycerides, the researchers said.