Buzz
Sugar has harmful effects on our health, not just because sugary foods are high in calories. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the same amount of sugar has much different effects on our bodies compared to other foods. Recent research has uncovered how the sugar industry tried to hide these conclusions.
For about fifty years, the prevailing belief was that dietary fat played a major role in heart disease. However, this notion is now being questioned—cholesterol from eggs or steak doesn’t directly travel from your stomach to your arteries. In the past decade, research has strengthened the link between sugar consumption and heart disease.
We are also learning more about how the idea of fat being linked to heart disease became so widespread. In the 1960s, scientists investigating the causes of heart disease initially suspected sugar, but according to a recent study, research funded by the sugar industry obscured and concealed this connection.
Stanton Glantz, one of the researchers behind the new study from the University of California, San Francisco, explained to NPR, “The sugar industry systematically shifted the blame onto fats.”
Research led by Glantz and colleagues, published in PLOS Biology, explores how the Sugar Research Foundation, which was connected to the American sugar trade association, financed studies on sugar's harmful health effects. However, the funding was abruptly halted before the research could be finalized and made public, as the findings were not favorable.
In 1967, the Sugar Research Foundation covertly sponsored a review article that dismissed studies linking sugar consumption to heart disease. This article appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine. The SRF then initiated its own research, using rats to compare the effects of consuming sucrose (sugar) versus starch or a regular rat diet.
The study continued for three years, but funding to complete it was cut off just twelve weeks from its conclusion. The preliminary data revealed that rats on a high-sugar diet had elevated triglyceride levels, a key risk factor for heart disease and stroke in humans. The research also indicated a link between sugar consumption and beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme related to bladder cancer in humans.
These were rat studies, showing risk factors rather than direct evidence of disease. This does not confirm that sugar directly causes heart disease or bladder cancer, but the halted research would have added to the growing body of evidence suggesting that sugar is more than just 'empty calories.'
Glantz's work contributes to an expanding body of research demonstrating how industry-funded studies often produce results that favor the industry. Furthermore, research that could potentially damage the industry is frequently stopped or left unpublished. This pattern can be observed across various sectors, from cigarettes to pharmaceuticals to climate change.
