In a 2015 JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) research paper a shocking revelation was made that contained proof the sugar industry bribed leading doctors to lie about and report on the consumption of sugar was safe when they knew it wasn’t.
In 1965, in fact, the Sugar Association paid two Harvard scientists $6,500 to twist the facts surrounding sugar.
They wanted to blame fat for the health problems sugar seemed to be causing. Why? So they could keep selling you more sugar.
They succeeded, and it led directly to the chronic disease and obesity epidemics we’re facing today. These epidemics have claimed the health and lives of billions of people.
Starting in the early 1950s, evidence began to appear that eating sugar might cause heart disease.
So, the sugar industry formed the Sugar Association. It was the Association’s job to keep the public image of sugar squeaky clean.
The Association sought out scientists who were trying to prove that fat was the major health threat, not sugar. They gave funding to these scientists to try to push their research ahead of anti-sugar research.
One of these scientists was Ancel Keys, author of the Seven Countries Study and father of the low-fat diet craze.
Ancel Keys received sugar industry funding for many years at his lab in Minnesota.7
However, by 1962, the Sugar Association was getting worried. Maybe payrolling scientists wasn’t enough! The evidence against sugar was growing too fast.
So, John Hickson — the Sugar Association’s vice president — started tracking down all the research that wasn’t friendly toward sugar.
In December 1964, Hickson reported back with bad news…
Multiple scientists — including John Yudkin, Europe’s leading nutritionist — had found major evidence that sugar caused both heart disease and diabetes.
In order to silence all this damaging anti-sugar research, Hickson made a proposal:
The Sugar Association would fund pro-sugar research of their own… at the highest academic level: Harvard University.
Several months later, they secured their inside man: Frederick Stare, founder and chair of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Frederick Stare was the perfect man for the job… because he’d already been taking money from the sugar industry for years.
In fact, just 5 years earlier, Dr. Stare wanted to build a new building for his department at Harvard. So, General Foods — a major sugar industry player — threw in $1 million ($8.1 million in today’s money) to get the project done.13
So, in 1965, with this influential Ivy League “yes man” on board… the Sugar Association launched “Project 226.”
Project 226 was the codename for their secret plan to create a major falsified nutrition report. It would use faulty science to “debunk” all the anti-sugar studies. And it would be published in the most prestigious medical journal possible.
Along with Dr. Frederick Stare was Dr. Mark Hegsted. He was hand-picked to write the “Project 226” report for a share of the bribe.16
The Sugar Association’s vice-president, John Hickson, would correspond directly with Dr. Hegsted, coaching him on how to skew the report in sugar’s favor.17
The memos between these two men show how corruption really works.
In November 1966 — after months of work — Dr. Hegsted submitted the final draft of the report for Hickson’s approval. It was exactly what the Sugar Association was looking for. Hickson wrote back happily:
“Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind and we look forward to its appearance in print.”
Hickson to Dr. Hegsted, November 1966
The report firmly concluded sugar was NOT to blame for America’s growing health problems. And because it came from Harvard, the entire medical community listened.21,22
Several months later, the review was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
As for Dr. Hegsted… he eventually became the head of nutrition for the USDA.
A secret project funded by Big Sugar called “Project 226” turns into a report written by Harvard scientists and published in a major medical journal.
It’s actually frightening how far they went to deliberately mislead the American public. But sugar was big business, and there was just too much money at stake.
This review was only the beginning… In 1970, Ancel Keys’ historic Seven Countries Study was published. In the study, Keys famously blamed fat for heart disease.
This was another major sigh of relief for the sugar industry — but not for your health!
Soon after that, many legitimate and uncorrupted anti-sugar scientists were deliberately discredited.
Meanwhile, more and more influential decision-makers landed on the sugar industry’s payroll…
People like Edwin Bierman, who was considered one of the top experts on diabetes.
People like senators Larry Craig and John Breaux. These two managed to shut down a World Health Organization proposal to change nutrition guidelines for the public. (The new guidelines would have called for less sugar in the diet.)
And what about the two Harvard scientists who were bribed by the sugar industry in 1965, Dr. Stare and Dr. Hegsted?
Well, Dr. Stare was on the advisory committee for the USDA’s historic 1985 nutrition guidelines. Here’s a direct quote from the official USDA pamphlet:
“Contrary to popular belief, too much sugar in your diet does not cause diabetes.”
100% false statement inserted into USDA’s 1985 nutrition guidelines
Biographical background, authors of the 2015 JAMA article exposing the sugar industry corruption.
Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA
Assistant Professor, UCSF School of Dentistry and The Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies
Cristin E. Kearns, DDS, MBA, is an Assistant Professor, UCSF School of Dentistry, Division of Oral Epidemiology & Dental Public Health and core faculty member of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies.
She has worked as a dental director for clinics serving low-income populations in Denver and as a manager of dental operations at the Kaiser Permanente Dental Care Program. She also received an MBA in health administration from the University of Colorado. She has worked as a senior consultant at the University of Colorado Center for Health Administration and an instructor at the University of Washington School of Dentistry.
Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH
Professor, UCSF School of Medicine
Laura A. Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, is a professor in the UCSF School of Medicine. She has dedicated her career to intervening on the social determinants of health and to understanding how lifestyle risk factors, such as alcohol and poor diet, influence chronic disease and health inequality. She holds a joint appointment in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine. Dr. Schmidt is also co-director of the Community Engagement and Health Policy Program for UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. She received her PhD training in sociology at UC Berkeley and, while there, completed doctoral coursework in public health. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical social work.
Stanton Glantz retired from the University of California San Francisco in September 2020, after 45 years on the faculty.
Dr. Glantz continues to conduct research on a wide range of topics ranging from the health effects of e-cigarettes and secondhand smoke (with particular emphasis on the cardiovascular system) to the efficacy of different tobacco control policies. As the tobacco landscape has changed, Dr. Glantz’ work expanded to include cannabis policy, because of the interactions between tobacco and cannabis.
Until his retirement, Dr. Glantz served as Principal Investigator for the $40 million 10 year Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) that was first funded in September 2013 and renewed for another 5 years in 2018 as part of a first-of-its-kind tobacco science regulatory program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The TCORS takes a broad interdisciplinary approach to understanding new tobacco products by integrating pulmonary, cardiovascular, pharmacology, behavioral and economic research to understand the effects of new products and inform tobacco product regulation.
Sugar Industry Influence on the Scientific Agenda of the National Institute of Dental Research’s 1971 National Caries Program: A Historical Analysis of Internal Documents: