Sugar Companies shifted focus to fat as
heart harm
Analysis of 50yearold 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). Those Harvard scientists
received the equivalent of $50,000 in today's dollars, the investigators said.
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 industryfunded
research, but admitted it should have been more open about past its
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 by about 30 percent. 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. As
media attention on the health risks associated with sugar increased, a trade
group for the sugar industry the Sugar Research Foundation commissioned a
research review by Harvard scientists. (The trade group today is called the
Sugar Association.) The association report appeared in the New England Journal
of Medicine in 1967. “The literature review helped shape not only public
opinion on what causes heart problems but also the scientific community's view
of how to evaluate dietary risk factors for heart disease ," said Dr.
Cristin Kearns, lead author of the new study. It was Kearns who unearthed the
industry documents.
The review identified high
cholesterol as the major risk for heart disease , suggesting high triglycerides
associated with sugar were less problematic, Kearns and colleagues said. Also,
the Harvard researchers criticized prior studies that linked sugar and heart
disease while sidestepping flaws in studies exploring the effects of fats, the
new report revealed. In all, the UCSF team analyzed more than 340 documents
between sugar representatives and two Harvard scientists behind the 1967 paper.
One of the scientists also served on scientific advisory boards for the sugar
industry, the authors of the new study said. Besides paying the scientists, the
sugar group chose articles for inclusion in the review, and received drafts
before publication, according to the new report. These key details weren't
noted in the 1967 publication, the authors of the new study said in a report
published Sept. 12 in JAMA Internal Medicine. In response to the new report,
the Sugar Association said in a statement that conflictofinterest policies
were less stringent and researchers weren't required to make financial
disclosures back then. However, the association acknowledged it should have
"exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities."
The statement further said research had continued to show that sugar "does
not have a unique role in heart disease." The UCSF team disputes that,
noting health policy has since begun to address sugar's role in heart disease.
Source:www.webmd.com
14.09.2016
Forgiveness easier to ask for,
but difficult to give
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