For decades, the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill?
November 15, 2012 |
This article first appeared in Mother Jones Magazine. Get your magazine subscription here.
ON
A BRISK SPRING Tuesday in 1976, a pair of executives from the Sugar
Association stepped up to the podium of a Chicago ballroom to
accept the Oscar of the public relations world, the
Silver Anvil award for excellence in "
the forging of public opinion."
The trade group had recently pulled off one of the greatest turnarounds
in PR history. For nearly a decade, the sugar industry had been
buffeted by crisis after crisis as the media and the public soured on
sugar and scientists began to view it as a likely cause of obesity,
diabetes, and heart disease. Industry ads claiming that eating sugar
helped you lose weight had been
called out by the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration had
launched a review of
whether sugar was even safe to eat. Consumption had declined 12 percent
in just two years, and producers could see where that trend might lead.
As John "JW" Tatem Jr. and Jack O'Connell Jr., the Sugar Association's
president and director of public relations, posed that day with their
trophies, their smiles only hinted at the coup they'd just pulled off.
Their winning campaign, crafted with the help of the prestigious public relations firm Carl Byoir & Associates, had been
prompted by a poll showing
that consumers had come to see sugar as fattening, and that most
doctors suspected it might exacerbate, if not cause, heart disease and
diabetes. With an initial annual budget of nearly $800,000 ($3.4 million
today) collected from the makers of Dixie Crystals, Domino, C&H,
Great Western, and other sugar brands, the association recruited a
stable of medical and nutritional professionals to allay the public's
fears, brought snack and beverage companies into the fold, and
bankrolled scientific papers that contributed to a "highly supportive"
FDA ruling, which, the Silver Anvil application boasted, made it
"unlikely that sugar will be subject to legislative restriction in
coming years."
The story of sugar, as Tatem told it, was one of a harmless product under attack by "
opportunists dedicated to exploiting the consuming public." Over the subsequent decades, it would be transformed from what the New York Times in 1977 had deemed "
a villain in disguise"
into a nutrient so seemingly innocuous that even the American Heart
Association and the American Diabetes Association approved it as part of
a healthy diet. Research on the suspected links between sugar and
chronic disease largely ground to a halt by the late 1980s, and
scientists came to view such pursuits as a career dead end. So effective
were the Sugar Association's efforts that, to this day, no consensus
exists about sugar's potential dangers. The industry's PR campaign
corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans' consumption
of "
caloric sweeteners,"
including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic
diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970,
obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the
incidence of diabetes has more than tripled. (The chart below uses sugar "availability" numbers rather than the USDA's
speculative new consumption figures.)
Precisely
how did the sugar industry engineer its turnaround? The answer is found
in more than 1,500 pages of internal memos, letters, and company board
reports
we discovered buried in the archives of
now-defunct sugar companies as well as in the recently released papers
of deceased researchers and consultants who played key roles in the
industry's strategy. They show how Big Sugar used Big Tobacco-style
tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling
health claims against their products. Compared to the tobacco companies,
which knew for a fact that their wares were deadly and spent billions
of dollars trying to cover up that reality, the sugar industry had a
relatively easy task. With the jury still out on sugar's health effects,
producers simply needed to make sure that the uncertainty lingered. But
the goal was the same: to safeguard sales by creating a body of
evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research.
This decades-long effort to stack the scientific deck is why, today, the
USDA's dietary guidelines only
speak of sugar in vague generalities. ("Reduce the intake of calories
from solid fats and added sugars.") It's why the FDA insists that sugar
is "
generally recognized as safe"
despite considerable evidence suggesting otherwise. It's why some
scientists' urgent calls for regulation of sugary products have been
dead on arrival, and it's why—absent any federal leadership—New York
City Mayor Michael Bloomberg felt compelled to propose a
ban on oversized sugary drinks that passed in September.
In
fact, a growing body of research suggests that sugar and its nearly
chemically identical cousin, HFCS, may very well cause diseases that
kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and that these
chronic conditions would be far less prevalent if we significantly
dialed back our consumption of added sugars. Robert Lustig, a leading
authority on pediatric obesity at the University of California-San
Francisco (whose arguments Gary explored in a 2011 New York Times
Magazine
cover story), made this case last February in the prestigious journal Nature. In an article titled "
The Toxic Truth About Sugar,"
Lustig and two colleagues observed that sucrose and HFCS are addictive
in much the same way as cigarettes and alcohol, and that overconsumption
of them is driving worldwide epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes
(the type associated with obesity). Sugar-related diseases are costing
America around $150 billion a year, the authors estimated, so federal
health officials need to step up and consider regulating the stuff.
The Sugar Association
dusted off what
has become its stock response: The Lustig paper, it said, "lacks the
scientific evidence or consensus" to support its claims, and its authors
were irresponsible not to point out that the full body of science "is
inconclusive at best." This inconclusiveness, of course, is precisely
what the Sugar Association has worked so assiduously to maintain. "In
confronting our critics,"
Tatem explained to
his board of directors back in 1976, "we try never to lose sight of the
fact that no confirmed scientific evidence links sugar to the
death-dealing diseases. This crucial point is the lifeblood of the
association."
THE SUGAR ASSOCIATION'S
earliest incarnation dates back to 1943, when growers and refiners created the Sugar Research Foundation to counter World War II
sugar-rationing propaganda—"How
Much Sugar Do You Need? None!" declared one government pamphlet. In
1947, producers rechristened their group the Sugar Association and
launched a new PR division, Sugar Information Inc., which before long
was
touting sugar as
a "sensible new approach to weight control." In 1968, in the hope of
enlisting foreign sugar companies to help defray costs, the Sugar
Association spun off its research division as the International Sugar
Research Foundation. "Misconceptions concerning the causes of tooth
decay, diabetes, and heart problems exist on a worldwide basis,"
explained a 1969
ISRF recruiting brochure.
As
early as 1962, internal Sugar Association memos had acknowledged the
potential links between sugar and chronic diseases, but at the time
sugar executives had a more pressing problem: Weight-conscious Americans
were switching in droves to diet sodas—particularly Diet Rite and
Tab—sweetened with cyclamate and saccharin. From 1963 through 1968, diet
soda's share of the soft-drink market shot from 4 percent to 15
percent. "A dollar's worth of sugar," ISRF vice president and research
director John Hickson warned in an internal review, "could be replaced
with a dime's worth" of sugar alternatives. "If anyone can undersell you
nine cents out of 10," Hickson
told the New York Times in 1969, "you'd better find some brickbat you can throw at him."
By
then, the sugar industry had doled out more than $600,000 (about $4
million today) to study every conceivable harmful effect of cyclamate
sweeteners, which are still sold around the world under names like Sugar
Twin and Sucaryl. In 1969, the FDA banned cyclamates in the United
States based on a study suggesting they could cause bladder cancer in
rats. Not long after, Hickson left the ISRF to work for the Cigar
Research Council. He was described in a confidential
tobacco industry memo as
a "supreme scientific politician who had been successful in condemning
cyclamates, on behalf of the [sugar industry], on somewhat shaky
evidence." It later emerged that the evidence suggesting that cyclamates
caused cancer in rodents was
not relevant to humans,
but by then the case was officially closed. In 1977, saccharin, too,
was nearly banned on the basis of animal results that would turn out to
be meaningless in people.
Meanwhile, researchers had been
reporting that blood lipids—cholesterol and triglycerides in
particular—were a risk factor in heart disease. Some people had high
cholesterol but normal triglycerides, prompting health experts to
recommend that they avoid animal fats. Other people were deemed
"carbohydrate sensitive," with normal cholesterol but markedly increased
triglyceride levels. In these individuals, even moderate sugar
consumption could cause a spike in triglycerides. John Yudkin, the
United Kingdom's leading nutritionist, was
making headlines with claims that sugar, not fat, was the primary cause of heart disease.
In
1967, the Sugar Association's research division began considering "the
rising tide of implications of sucrose in atherosclerosis." Before long,
according to a confidential 1970 review of industry-funded studies, the
newly formed ISRF was spending 10 percent of its research budget on the
link between diet and heart disease. Hickson, the ISRF's vice
president, urged his member corporations to keep the results of the
review under wraps. Of particular concern was the work of a University
of Pennsylvania researcher on "sucrose sensitivity," which sugar
executives feared was "
likely to reveal evidence of harmful effects." One ISRF consultant
recommended that
sugar companies get to the truth of the matter by sponsoring a full-on
study. In what would become a pattern, the ISRF opted not to follow his
advice. Another ISRF-sponsored study, by biochemist Walter Pover of the
University of Birmingham, in England, had uncovered a possible mechanism
to explain how sugar raises triglyceride levels. Pover believed he was
on the verge of demonstrating this mechanism "conclusively" and that 18
more weeks of work would nail it down. But instead of providing the
funds, the ISRF nixed the project, assessing its value as "nil."
The
industry followed a similar strategy when it came to diabetes. By 1973,
links between sugar, diabetes, and heart disease were sufficiently
troubling that Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota convened a hearing
of his Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs to address the
issue. An international panel of experts—including Yudkin and Walter
Mertz, head of the Human Nutrition Institute at the Department of
Agriculture—testified that variations in sugar consumption were the best
explanation for the differences in diabetes rates between populations,
and that research by the USDA and others supported the notion that
eating too much sugar promotes dramatic population-wide increases in the
disease. One panelist, South African diabetes specialist George
Campbell, suggested that anything more than 70 pounds per person per
year—about half of what is sold in America today—would spark epidemics.
In
the face of such hostile news from independent scientists, the ISRF
hosted its own conference the following March, focusing exclusively on
the work of researchers who were skeptical of a sugar/diabetes
connection. "All those present agreed that a large amount of research is
still necessary before a firm conclusion can be arrived at," according
to a
conference review published
in a prominent diabetes journal. In 1975, the foundation reconvened in
Montreal to discuss research priorities with its consulting scientists.
Sales were sinking, Tatem reminded the gathered sugar execs, and a major
factor was "the impact of consumer advocates who link sugar consumption
with certain diseases."
Following the Montreal conference, the ISRF
disseminated a memo quoting
Errol Marliss, a University of Toronto diabetes specialist,
recommending that the industry pursue "well-designed research programs"
to establish sugar's role in the course of diabetes and other diseases.
"Such research programs might produce an answer that sucrose is bad in
certain individuals," he warned. But the studies "should be undertaken
in a sufficiently comprehensive way as to produce results. A gesture
rather than full support is unlikely to produce the sought-after
answers."
A gesture, however, is what the industry would
offer. Rather than approve a serious investigation of the purported
links between sucrose and disease, American sugar companies
quit supporting the
ISRF's research projects. Instead, via the Sugar Association proper,
they would spend roughly $655,000 between 1975 and 1980 on
17 studies designed, as internal documents put it, "
to maintain research as a main prop of the industry's defense." Each proposal was vetted by a
panel of industry-friendly scientists and a
second committee staffed by representatives from sugar companies and "
contributing research members"
such as Coca-Cola, Hershey's, General Mills, and Nabisco. Most of the
cash was awarded to researchers whose studies seemed explicitly designed
to exonerate sugar. One even proposed to explore whether sugar could be
shown to boost serotonin levels in rats' brains, and thus "prove of
therapeutic value, as in the relief of depression," an
internal document noted.
At
best, the studies seemed a token effort. Harvard Medical School
professor Ron Arky, for example, received money from the Sugar
Association to determine whether sucrose has a different effect on blood
sugar and other diabetes indicators if eaten alongside complex
carbohydrates like pectin and psyllium. The project went nowhere, Arky
told us recently. But the Sugar Association "didn't care."
In
short, rather than do definitive research to learn the truth about its
product, good or bad, the association stuck to a PR scheme designed to
"establish with the broadest possible audience—virtually everyone is a
consumer—the safety of sugar as a food." One of its first acts was to
establish a
Food & Nutrition Advisory Council consisting
of a half-dozen physicians and two dentists willing to defend sugar's
place in a healthy diet, and set aside roughly $60,000 per year (more
than $220,000 today) to
cover its cost.
Working
to the industry's recruiting advantage was the rising notion that
cholesterol and dietary fat—especially saturated fat—were the likely
causes of heart disease. (Tatem even suggested, in a
letter to the Times Magazine,
that some "sugar critics" were motivated merely by wanting "to keep the
heat off saturated fats.") This was the brainchild of nutritionist
Ancel Keys, whose University of Minnesota laboratory had received
financial support from the sugar industry as early as 1944. From the
1950s through the 1980s, Keys remained the most outspoken proponent of
the fat hypothesis, often clashing publicly with Yudkin, the most vocal
supporter of the sugar hypothesis—the two men "shared a good deal of
loathing," recalled one of Yudkin's colleagues.
So when the Sugar
Association needed a heart disease expert for its Food & Nutrition
Advisory Council, it approached Francisco Grande, one of Keys' closest
colleagues. Another panelist was University of Oregon nutritionist
William Connor, the leading purveyor of the notion that it is dietary
cholesterol that causes heart disease. As its top diabetes expert, the
industry recruited
Edwin Bierman of
the University of Washington, who believed that diabetics need not pay
strict attention to their sugar intake so long as they maintained a
healthy weight by burning off the calories they consumed. Bierman also
professed an apparently unconditional faith that it was dietary fat
(and being fat) that caused heart disease, with sugar having no
meaningful effect.
It is hard to overestimate Bierman's role in
shifting the diabetes conversation away from sugar. It was primarily
Bierman who convinced the American Diabetes Association to liberalize
the amount of carbohydrates (including sugar) it recommended in the
diets of diabetics, and focus more on urging diabetics to lower their
fat intake, since diabetics are particularly likely to die from heart
disease. Bierman also presented industry-funded studies when he
coauthored a section on potential causes for a National Commission on
Diabetes report in 1976; the document influences the federal diabetes
research agenda to this day. Some researchers, he acknowledged, had
"argued eloquently" that consumption of refined carbohydrates (such as
sugar) is a precipitating factor in diabetes. But then Bierman cited
five studies—two of them bankrolled by the ISRF—that were "inconsistent"
with that hypothesis. "A review of all available laboratory and
epidemiologic evidence," he concluded, "suggests that the most important
dietary factor in increasing the risk of diabetes is total calorie
intake, irrespective of source."
The point man on the industry's food and nutrition panel was
Frederick Stare,
founder and chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard
School of Public Health. Stare and his department had a long history of
ties to Big Sugar. An ISRF internal research review credited the sugar
industry with funding some 30 papers in his department from 1952 through
1956 alone. In 1960, the department broke ground on a new $5 million
building funded largely by private donations, including a $1 million
gift from General Foods, the maker of Kool-Aid and Tang.
By the
early 1970s, Stare ranked among the industry's most reliable advocates,
testifying in Congress about the wholesomeness of sugar even as his
department kept raking in funding from sugar producers and food and
beverage giants such as Carnation, Coca-Cola, Gerber, Kellogg, and Oscar
Mayer. His name also appears in tobacco documents, which show that he
procured industry funding for a
study aimed at exonerating cigarettes as a cause of heart disease.
The
first act of the Food & Nutrition Advisory Council was to compile
"Sugar in the Diet of Man," an 88-page white paper edited by Stare and
published in 1975 to "organize existing scientific facts concerning
sugar." It was a compilation of historical evidence and arguments that
sugar companies could use to counter the claims of Yudkin, Stare's
Harvard colleague Jean Mayer, and other researchers whom Tatem called "
enemies of sugar." The document was sent to reporters—the Sugar Association circulated 25,000 copies—along with a
press release headlined
"Scientists dispel sugar fears." The report neglected to mention that
it was funded by the sugar industry, but internal documents
confirm that it was.
The
Sugar Association also relied on Stare to take its message to the
people: "Place Dr. Stare on the AM America Show" and "Do a 3 ½ minute
interview with Dr. Stare for 200 radio stations," note the association's
meeting minutes. Using Stare as a proxy,
internal documents explained,
would help the association "make friends with the networks" and "keep
the sugar industry in the background." By the time Stare's copious
conflicts of interest were finally revealed—in "
Professors on the Take,"
a 1976 exposé by the Center for Science in the Public Interest—Big
Sugar no longer needed his assistance. The industry could turn to an FDA
document to continue where he'd left off.
While Stare and his
colleagues had been drafting "Sugar in the Diet of Man," the FDA was
launching its first review of whether sugar was, in the official jargon,
generally recognized as safe (GRAS), part of a series of
food-additive reviews the
Nixon administration had requested of the agency. The FDA subcontracted
the task to the Federation of American Societies of Experimental
Biology, which created an 11-member committee to vet hundreds of food
additives from acacia to zinc sulfate. While the mission of the GRAS
committee was to conduct unbiased reviews of the existing science for
each additive, it was led by biochemist George W. Irving Jr., who had
previously served two years as chairman of the scientific advisory board
of the International Sugar Research Foundation. Industry documents show
that another committee member, Samuel Fomon, had received
sugar-industry funding for three of the five years prior to the sugar
review.
The FDA's instructions were clear: To label a substance as
a potential health hazard, there had to be "credible evidence of, or
reasonable grounds to suspect, adverse biological effects"—which
certainly existed for sugar at the time. But the GRAS committee's review
would depend heavily on "Sugar in the Diet of Man" and other work by
its authors. In the section on heart disease, committee members cited 14
studies whose results were "conflicting," but 6 of those bore industry
fingerprints, including Francisco Grande's chapter from "Sugar in the
Diet of Man" and 5 others that came from Grande's lab or were otherwise
funded by the sugar industry.
The diabetes chapter of the
review acknowledged studies suggesting that "long term consumption of
sucrose can result in a functional change in the capacity to metabolize
carbohydrates and thus lead to diabetes mellitus," but it went on to
cite five reports contradicting that notion. All had industry ties, and
three were authored by Ed Bierman, including his chapter in "Sugar in
the Diet of Man."
In January 1976, the GRAS committee published
its preliminary conclusions, noting that while sugar probably
contributed to tooth decay, it was not a "hazard to the public." The
draft review dismissed the diabetes link as "circumstantial" and called
the connection to cardiovascular disease "less than clear," with fat
playing a greater role. The only cautionary note, besides cavities, was
that all bets were off if sugar consumption were to increase
significantly. The committee then thanked the Sugar Association for
contributing "information and data." (Tatem would
later remark that while he was "proud of the credit line...we would probably be better off without it.")
The
committee's perspective was shared by many researchers, but certainly
not all. For a public hearing on the draft review, scientists from the
USDA's Carbohydrate Nutrition Laboratory submitted what they considered
"abundant evidence that sucrose is one of the dietary factors
responsible for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease." As they
later explainedin
the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, some portion of the
public—perhaps 15 million Americans at that time—clearly could not
tolerate a diet rich in sugar and other carbohydrates. Sugar
consumption, they said, should come down by "a minimum of 60 percent,"
and the government should launch a national campaign "to inform the
populace of the hazards of excessive sugar consumption." But the
committee stood by its conclusions in the
final version of its report presented to the FDA in October 1976.
For
the sugar industry, the report was gospel. The findings "should be
memorized" by the staff of every company associated with the sugar
industry,
Tatem told his membership. "In the long run,"
he said, the document "cannot be sidetracked, and you may be sure we will push its exposure to all corners of the country."
The
association promptly produced an ad for newspapers and magazines
exclaiming "Sugar is Safe!" It "does not cause death-dealing diseases,"
the ad declared, and "there is no substantiated scientific evidence
indicating that sugar causes diabetes, heart disease or any other
malady...The next time you hear a promoter attacking sugar, beware the
ripoff. Remember he can't substantiate his charges. Ask yourself what
he's promoting or what he is seeking to cover up. If you get a chance,
ask him about the GRAS Review Report. Odds are you won't get an answer.
Nothing stings a nutritional liar like scientific facts."
THE
SUGAR ASSOCIATION WOULD SOON get its chance to put the committee's
sugar review to the test. In 1977, McGovern's select committee—the one
that had held the 1973 hearings on sugar and diabetes—blindsided the
industry with a report titled "Dietary Goals for the United States,"
recommending that Americans lower their sugar intake by 40 percent
(PDF). The association "hammered away" at the McGovern report using the GRAS review "as our scientific Bible,"
Tatem told sugar executives.
McGovern held fast, but Big Sugar would prevail in the end. In 1980, when the
USDA first published its own set of dietary guidelines, it
relied heavily on a review written for the American Society of Clinical Nutrition by
none other than Bierman,
who used the GRAS committee's findings to bolster his own. "Contrary to
widespread opinion, too much sugar does not seem to cause diabetes,"
the USDA guidelines concluded. They went on to counsel that people
should "avoid too much sugar," without bothering to explain what that
meant.
In 1982, the FDA once again took up the GRAS committee's
conclusion that sugar was safe, proposing to make it official. The
announcement resulted in a swarm of public criticism, prompting the
agency to reopen its case. Four years later,
an agency task force concluded,
again leaning on industry-sponsored studies, that "there is no
conclusive evidence...that demonstrates a hazard to the general public
when sugars are consumed at the levels that are now current." (Walter
Glinsmann, the task force's lead administrator, would later become a
consultant to the Corn Refiners Association, which represents producers of high-fructose corn syrup.)
The USDA, meanwhile, had updated its own dietary guidelines. With Fred Stare now on the advisory committee, the
1985 guidelines retained
the previous edition's vague recommendation to "avoid too much" sugar
but stated unambiguously that "too much sugar in your diet does not
cause diabetes." At the time, the USDA's own Carbohydrate Nutrition
Laboratory was still
generating evidence to
the contrary and supporting the notion that "even low sucrose intake"
might be contributing to heart disease in 10 percent of Americans.
By
the early 1990s, the USDA's research into sugar's health effects had
ceased, and the FDA's take on sugar had become conventional wisdom,
influencing a generation's worth of key publications on diet and health.
Reports from the
surgeon general and the
National Academy of Sciences repeated
the mantra that the evidence linking sugar to chronic disease was
inconclusive, and then went on to equate "inconclusive" with
"nonexistent." They also ignored a crucial caveat: The FDA reviewers had
deemed added sugars—those in excess of what occurs naturally in our
diets—safe at "current" 1986 consumption levels. But the FDA's
consumption estimate was 43 percent lower than that of its sister
agency, the USDA. By 1999, the average American would be eating
more than double the amount the FDA had deemed safe—although we have cut back by 13 percent since then.
ASKED
TO COMMENT ON SOME of the documents described in this article, a Sugar
Association spokeswoman responded that they are "at this point
historical in nature and do not necessarily reflect the current mission
or function" of the association. But it is clear enough that the
industry still operates behind the scenes to make sure regulators never
officially set a limit on the amount of sugar Americans can safely
consume. The authors of the 2010 USDA dietary guidelines, for instance,
cited two scientific reviews as evidence that sugary drinks don't make adults fat. The first was written by
Sigrid Gibson,
a nutrition consultant whose clients included the Sugar Bureau
(England's version of the Sugar Association) and the World Sugar
Research Organization (formerly the ISRF). The second review was
authored by
Carrie Ruxton, who served as research manager of the Sugar Bureau from 1995 to 2000.
The
Sugar Association has also worked its connections to assure that the
government panels making dietary recommendations—the USDA's Dietary
Guidelines Advisory Committee, for instance—include researchers
sympathetic to its position. One
internal newsletter boasted
in 2003 that for the USDA panel, the association had "worked diligently
to achieve the nomination of another expert wholly through third-party
endorsements."
In the few instances when governmental
authorities have sought to reduce people's sugar consumption, the
industry has attacked openly. In 2003, after an expert panel convened by
the World Health Organization recommended that no more than 10 percent
of all calories in people's diets should come from added sugars—nearly
40 percent less than the
USDA's estimate for the average American—current Sugar Association president
Andrew Briscoe wrote the
WHO's director general warning that the association would "exercise
every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of the report and
urge "congressional appropriators to challenge future funding" for the
WHO. Larry Craig (R-Idaho, sugar beets) and John Breaux (D-La.,
sugarcane), then co-chairs of the Senate Sweetener Caucus,
wrote a letter to
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, urging his
"prompt and favorable attention" to prevent the report from becoming
official WHO policy. (Craig had received
more than $36,000 in sugar industry contributions in the previous election cycle.) Thompson's people responded with a
28-page letter detailing
"where the US Government's policy recommendations and interpretation of
the science differ" with the WHO report. Not surprisingly, the
organization left its experts' recommendation on sugar intake out of its
official dietary strategy.
In
recent years the scientific tide has begun to turn against sugar.
Despite the industry's best efforts, researchers and public health
authorities have come to accept that the primary risk factor for both
heart disease and type 2 diabetes is a condition called metabolic
syndrome, which now affects more than
75 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Metabolic syndrome is
characterized by a cluster of abnormalities—some of which Yudkin and
others associated with sugar almost 50 years ago—including weight gain,
increased insulin levels, and elevated triglycerides. It also has been
linked to
cancer and
Alzheimer's disease. "Scientists have now established causation," Lustig said recently. "Sugar causes metabolic syndrome."
Newer studies from
the University of California-Davis have even reported that LDL
cholesterol, the classic risk factor for heart disease, can be raised
significantly in just two weeksby drinking sugary beverages at a rate
well within the upper range of what Americans consume—four 12-ounce
glasses a day of beverages like soda, Snapple, or Red Bull. The result
is a new wave of researchers coming out publicly against Big Sugar.
During the battle over the 2005 USDA guidelines, an
internal Sugar Association newsletter described
its strategy toward anyone who had the temerity to link sugar
consumption with chronic disease and premature death: "Any disparagement
of sugar," it read, "will be met with forceful, strategic public
comments and the supporting science." But since the latest science is
anything but supportive of the industry, what happens next?
"At
present," Lustig ventures, "they have absolutely no reason to alter any
of their practices. The science is in—the medical and economic problems
with excessive sugar consumption are clear. But the industry is going to
fight tooth and nail to prevent that science from translating into
public policy."
Like the tobacco industry before it, the sugar
industry may be facing the inexorable exposure of its product as a
killer—science will ultimately settle the matter one way or the
other—but as Big Tobacco learned a long time ago, even the inexorable
can be held up for a very long time.
Gary Taubes, author of the 2011 best-seller
Why We Get Fat, has written for Discover, Science, and the New York Times Magazine. He is currently writing a book about sugar.
Cristin
Kearns Couzens took a two-year break from her career in dental health
administration to pursue independent research on the sugar industry.
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