Gary Taubes & Cristin Kearns Couzens, “Sweet Little Lies,” Mother Jones, November/December 2012
Based on hundreds of internal industry documents, this article outlines the
alleged decades-long effort by sugar-producing interests to influence the
scientific debate about the purported health effects of sugar. According to the
authors, the memos, letters and company board reports “show how Big Sugar
used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would
dismiss troubling health claims against their products.” The article claims
that the industries’ goals were the same: “safeguard sales by creating a body
of evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research.”
As early as 1943, grower and refiners reportedly formed the Sugar Research
Foundation to counter calls for sugar-rationing during World War II.
Among other matters, the article claims that the industry purportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on research suggesting that low-calorie sweeteners caused disease in animals and redirected any research funds it was providing through its International Sugar Research Foundation (ISRF) when studies looked like they would establish a link between sugar consumption and disease. ISRF hosted a conference in 1974 to counter a 1973 congressional hearing on sugar, diabetes and heart disease spearheaded by the late Senator George McGovern (D-S.D.). According to an ISRF conference review published in a diabetes journal, “All those present agreed that a large amount of research is still necessary before a firm conclusion can be arrived at.”
Industry-funded research proposals in the intervening years were allegedly vetted by industry-friendly scientists, as well as a committee staffed by sugar and major food and beverage company representatives. “Most of the cash,” say the authors, “was awarded to researchers whose studies seemed explicitly designed to exonerate sugar.” The article discusses industry-linked individuals who had a lasting impact on government initiatives, including the federal diabetes research agenda, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) determination that sugar is generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines, which the authors characterize as making “vague recommendations” regarding sugar intake. The sugar industry also apparently produced newspaper and magazine ads after FDA made its GRAS ruling, claiming “Sugar is Safe!” and it “does not cause death-dealing diseases.”
The authors further claim that the Sugar Association directly confronted the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2003 after an expert panel recommended “that no more than 10 percent of all calories in people’s diets should come from added sugars.” Congressional representatives from states producing sugar beets and sugarcane reportedly wrote to the Secretary of Health and Human Services calling for his “prompt and favorable attention” to prevent the panel report from becoming official WHO policy. The secretary communicated with WHO about “where the US Government’s policy recommendations and interpretation of the science differ” with the WHO report, and the organization omitted the recommendation on sugar intake from its dietary strategy.
The article concludes by discussing some of the recent research linking sugar
to the risk of diabetes and heart disease and states, “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.”
