Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies
How
the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill?
—By Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens
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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 Anvilaward 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 beencalled 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.
For 40 years, the sugar
industry's priority has been to shed doubt on studies suggesting that its product
makes people sick.
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 Magazinecover 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.
"[T]he fact that no
confirmed scientific evidence links sugar to the death-dealing diseases…is the
lifeblood" of the Sugar Association.
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 explainedto 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 IIsugar-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 recommendedthat 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."
One diabetes expert testified
that anything more than 70 pounds per person per year—about half of what is
sold in America today—might spark epidemics.
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."
Industry-funded science
projects were vetted by a panel with reps from Hershey's, Coca-Cola, General
Mills, and Nabisco.
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 asecond 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 Councilconsisting 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.
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