The Sweet Payoff: Big Sugar's Lies and Cardiovascular Disease

The Journal of American Medical Associations (JAMA) released information that should change the face of nutrition in the modern world! The information doesn't come from the newest research or findings. Instead, they reveal a sweet deal cut by Big Sugar in the 60's to pay scientists to encourage them to blame FAT for heart disease!

In the article Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research Cristin Kearns, says:

"In the 1950s, disproportionately high rates of coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality in American men led to studies of the role of dietary factors, including cholesterol, phytosterols, excessive calories, amino acids, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals in influencing CHD risk. By the 1960s, 2 prominent physiologists were championing divergent causal hypotheses of CHD: John Yudkin identified added sugars as the primary agent, while Ancel Keys identified total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol. However, by the 1980s, few scientists believed that added sugars played a significant role in CHD, and the first 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans focused on reducing total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol for CHD prevention."

Although the contribution of dietary sugars to CHD is still debated, what is clear is that the sugar industry, led by the Sugar Association, the sucrose industry’s Washington, DC–based trade association, steadfastly denies that there is a relationship between added sugar consumption and CVD risk. This Special Communication uses internal sugar industry documents to describe how the industry sought to influence the scientific debate over the dietary causes of CHD in the 1950s and 1960s, a debate still reverberating in 2016.

This article brings to light correspondence between the sugar industry and a nutrition professor at Harvard! It reveals that the sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960's to downplay the link between heart disease and sugar! They even went so far as to encourage the Harvard scientist to encourage the myth that fat was to blame!

avocado is a delicious source of "good" fats that will satisfy any sweet-tooth!

The culprit, a mysterious shadow organization called "The Sugar Research Foundation" paid three Harvard scientist "the equivalent of about $50,000 in today's dollars" to publish an article pointing the finger at fat and discrediting research that indicated American's super-saturated sugar diet was to blame for the heart disease epidemic.

“They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, co-author of the JAMA article and a professor of medicine at UCSF. "The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.”

By getting an paper published in such an esteemed journal of medicine "Big Sugar" was able to shape the dietary understanding of hundreds of millions of people. The research paid for by Big Sugar encouraged Americans to reduce their dietary fat, which turned many people to high -sugar, low fat foods now to blame for our obesity crisis.

Although, many people are coming to understand the important role of "good" fats in their diet, the pervasive belief that FATS=BAD still has a stranglehold on the minds and marketing departments of food manufacturers and general populace.

This is one of the best documented cases of erroneous research to date and will have major repercussions as medical professionals, nutritionists, and the average consumer reconsider what they know about saturated fats and diets high in deadly and addictive sugar!

Source:
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2548255
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5339699
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fwell-eat