KETCHUM, Idaho—In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid researchers to distort scientific findings that might have halted the nation’s love affair with the refined white version. Big Sugar continued its powerful and profitable ways. Americans became the fattest people on earth.
In an article published last month, the Journal of American Medicine revealed that the sugar industry paid researchers to alter reports of their findings about heart disease, to point fingers away from sugar’s apparent role in heart disease and toward carbohydrates and fat instead.
The general acceptance of that information and the development of nutritional policies based on that acceptance likely contributed to the current epidemic of obesity, according the report.
The story smacks of the machinations pulled by Big Tobacco as that industry tried to deny, dismiss or bury the truth about the dangers of smoking. Like tobacco, sugar’s outsized influence on policy is entwined with U.S. history.
By the turn of the 20th century, sugar refining was the largest manufacturing sector in the U.S. Revenue from tariffs accounted for one-sixth of the federal budget. Both individuals and the government were hooked on refined white sugar.
Source: www.mtexpress.com