An abstract from this week's issue of
JAMA:
Early
warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar
(sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation
(SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to
early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings
chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first
CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and
downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The
SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and
received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together
with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings
suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s
that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while
promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees
should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and
include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the
effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease
development.
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