"Sugar Industry Attempts to Manipulate the Science"
“Corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder profits
and therefore have to oppose public health policies that could threaten profits.”
It’s just how the system is set up.
“Unequivocal, longstanding evidence shows
that to achieve this, diverse industries with products that can damage health
have worked systematically to subvert the scientific process.”
Take the sugar industry, for example.
Internal documents showed they were concerned
that health food faddists were becoming an active menace to the industry.
Sugar was under attack, “and many of the poor unfortunate public swallow
the misinformation broadcast by the propagandists.”
What were books like Yudkin’s Pure, White and Deadly saying?
“All of the propaganda [is] to the effect that sugar is a non-essential food.”
No! (Gasp)
How dare they say sugar is a non-essential food.
Next, they’ll be saying it’s not really food at all.
And that was the sugar industry’s line: sugar is a cheap safe food,
and this coming from the founder and chair of Harvard’s nutrition department,
Fredrick Stare, long known as Harvard’s sugar-pushing nutritionist.
Not only did the sugar industry try to influence the direction of dental research,
but heart disease research as well, paying Stare and colleagues to write
this review to help downplay any risk from sugar.
Now to be fair, this was five years before we even realized
triglycerides were also an independent risk factor beyond just cholesterol.
The main reason attention stayed focused on saturated fat
is not because of the might of the sugar industry;
there was just not as much data to support it.
In fact, the even more powerful meat and dairy industries loved
the anti-sugar message.
Who do you think sponsored Yudkin?
In fact, on like the first page of Pure, White and Deadly
he thanks all the food and drug companies that had provided him
with such constant generous support.
Who paid for Yudkin’s speaking tour?
The egg industry, of course, to try to take some heat off of cholesterol.
Hegsted, one of the co-authors of the funded review
wasn’t exactly an industry cheerleader.
He recommended people cut down on all the risky stuff:
less meat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol and less sugar, less salt.
It wasn't the sugar industry that got him fired for speaking truth to power;
it was the beef industry.
The sugar industry was able to conceal its funding,
because the New England Journal of Medicine didn’t require disclosure
of conflicts of interest until 17 years later.
These muckraking researchers suggest “policymakers should consider
giving less weight to food industry–funded studies.”
But why is the food industry funding studies at all?
When it comes to the corporate manipulation of research,
ultimately conflicts of interest don’t just need to be disclosed
and managed but ideally eliminated.
Things may not change until public health researchers start refusing
to take money from the junk food industry, period.
It worked for tobacco.
Many prestigious medical and public health institutions have instituted
bans on tobacco industry funding.
But wait, can’t scientists remain objective and impartial
even in the face of all that cash?
Apparently not, as industry-funded research has been shown to be up
to 88 times more likely to produce funder favorable outcomes.
What, do we think corporations are in the business
of just handing out money for free?
The classic example is the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry,
who accepted a million dollar grant from Coca-Cola.
Before the grant, their official position was that
“frequent consumption of [sugary beverages]
can be a significant factor
in the…initiation and progression of dental [cavities],”
which— after the grant—changed to “scientific evidence is certainly not clear
on the exact role that soft drinks play.”
As CSPI’s Integrity in Science Project put it,
“What a difference a million dollars makes!”