Nutrition / Diet Clinical Trials / Drug Trials Heart Disease Regulatory Affairs / Drug Approvals Sugar and heart disease: The sour side of industry-funded research

Nutrition / Diet

Clinical Trials / Drug Trials Heart Disease Regulatory Affairs / Drug Approvals

Sugar and heart disease: The sour side of industry-funded research

Written by Honor Whiteman

Published: Wednesday 23 September 2016

---

While there is a general agreement that sugar intake is bad for heart health, this was not always the case. In the 1960s, when deaths from heart disease in the United States reached a peak, researchers were divided on the primary dietary contributors to the condition: sugar or fat? For years, studies blamed the latter, but recent research suggests the sugar industry may have played a pivotal role in which way the finger was pointing.

Researchers have uncovered a 50-year-old heart disease study that was funded by the sugar industry to shift the blame from sugar to fat.

Earlier this month, dentist-turned-researcher Dr. Christin Kearns, of the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), and colleagues reignited the debate over the influence the food industry has over scientific research.
In JAMA Internal Medicine, the team published a report revealing the discovery of a study published in the 1960s that received funding from the Sugar Association - formerly the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF).
The problem? The SRF funding was not disclosed - mandatory conflict of interest disclosure was not introduced until the 1980s - and there is evidence that the researchers of the 50-year-old study were paid to shift the focus away from the harms sugar intake poses for heart health.
The study in question was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on July 27, 1967.
Conducted by three former nutritionists at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA - Dr. Frederick Stare, Dr. Mark Hegsted, and Dr. Robert B. McGandy, who are now deceased - the research claimed that consumption of dietary fats, rather than sugar, was the primary cause of coronary heart disease (CHD).

The landing of 'Project 226'

In their report, Dr. Kearns and colleagues reveal the discovery of documents in public archives that show Drs. Stare and Hegsted were paid $6,500 - the equivalent of almost $50,000 today - by the SRF to detract attention away from previous studies linking sugar to CHD.
According to the UCSF researchers, the documents show that in 1964, John Hickson - then president of the SRF - penned a memo suggesting the SRF "embark on a major program" in order to redress "negative attitudes towards sugar," and one way he proposed doing so was to fund research to "refute our detractors."
One year later, Hickson commissioned Dr. Hegsted and colleagues to conduct "Project 226" - described by Hickson as "a review article of the several papers which find some special metabolic peril in sucrose."
Hickson provided Dr. Hegsted with a number of papers, and according to Dr. Kearns and team, the Harvard researchers "heavily criticized" studies that identified a link between sucrose - or table sugar - and coronary heart disease, while disregarding the limitations of studies that associated fat with the condition.
The study's conclusion? That lowering intake of fat is the only way to keep cholesterol levels low and prevent CHD. This, therefore, would suggest to the general population and policymakers that a high-sugar diet does not play a major role in CHD.
Commenting on their discovery, Dr. Kearns and co-authors say:

"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."