76 MEN’S HEALTH MENSHEALTH.CO.UKONE
MORNING
IN MAY
1994,
research in their favour sounds like a
conspiracy, but we know for a fact that it
has happened, and continues to happen.”
The nutritional fallout of the 1967
New England Journal of Medicine paper,
and others that followed, is still being
felt today. For instance, although it
does contain some advice on sugar, the
majority of Public Health England’s
nutritional directions still encourage us to
“choose lean cuts” of meat and to restrict
fat. A growing number of nutritionists
and doctors believe this advice is flawed.
In 1993 the largest study of its kind was
commissioned to determine, as most
people then believed, that a low-fat
diet is healthy. When the data came in,
the lead researcher admitted he was
“scratching his head” at the results, which
showed that people on a low-fat diet
were no less likely to die of heart disease
or cancer than those on a high-fat diet.
“Official advice focuses on a moderatean anti-smoking campaigner named
Stanton Glantz received a strange
delivery. Sent by a ‘Mr Butts’ to his office
at the University of California, the boxes
contained 4000 pages of confidential
documents that laid bare how the tobacco
industry had for decades suppressed
research proving cigarettes were deadly.
A national scandal ensued and so-called
Big Tobacco’s rep never fully recovered
from the revelations of what came to be
known as ‘The Cigarette Papers’.
Today, the sugar industry – Big
Sugar, if you will – is having a similar
moment. Cristin Kearns, a doctoral
research student working out of the
same university as Glantz, has spent
years collating thousands of pages
of documents on its dealings. The
resulting ‘Sugar Papers’, published in
the Journal of the American Medical
Association in September 2016 and
reported on worldwide, expose
how a powerful industry with close
government connections spent years
denying mounting evidence that its“Global sugar
consumption
has tripled in the
past 50 years”main product
is – undeniably,
inarguably – toxic
to humans.
In devastating
detail, the papers
reveal how a
trade body calledgreat success. Worldwide, sugar
consumption has tripled in
the past 50 years. At the same
time, obesity rates in the UK are
expected to include 60% of men
by 2050. Meanwhile, the charity
Diabetes UK reports that 10%
of the NHS’s budget – more than
the Sugar Association began, from
the early ’60s, to fund “research and
information and legislative programs”
that would encourage the public to
consume more sugar. The sticking point
was a 1967 review published in the New
England Journal of Medicine that argued
definitively that it was high cholesterol
and fat – not sugar – that were putting
our health at risk of everything from£11bn a year and predicted to rise to £17bn
by 2035 – is now spent on treating type
2 diabetes, the complications of which
can include blindness, limb amputation,
kidney failure, heart attack and stroke.
There is nothing sweet about this tale.
Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition,
food studies and public health at New
York University, is outraged by the
revelations: “You never see examples of
corruption this blatant. Food companies
deliberately setting out to manipulatecardiovascular disease to stroke. Not only
did the review ignore strong evidence
implicating sugar as another cause, it
failed to disclose who had paid for the
research. In a single paper we were sold
the beginnings of a deception that would
influence our eating habits and line the
pockets of Big Sugar for decades to come.SWEETENING THE DEAL
The Sugar Papers are the latest and most
damning aspect of a growing body of
research proving that a conglomerate
of some of the largest sugar producers
in America has spent years soliciting
governments and muddying scientific
waters by funding its own studies. It
has used every legal loophole it can
find to promote its own ends, and to