In the 1960s, the sugar industry, through the Sugar Research Foundation (now The Sugar Association), paid three Harvard scientists—Frederick Stare, Mark Hegsted, and Robert McGandy—approximately $50,000 in today’s money to shift blame for heart disease from sugar to saturated fat. We’ve known this since 2016 (when researcher Dr. Cristin Kearns found the receipts while digging through historical documents in the basement of Harvard Medical School’s Library), and I’ve touched on it in a previous issue, so here, just the highlights:

• This funding led to a 1967 review in the New England Journal of Medicine, where they downplayed sugar’s risks and emphasized fat and cholesterol as the primary culprits.
• The SRF influenced the research by setting objectives and reviewing drafts, though this was not disclosed at the time, as conflict-of-interest rules were not yet standard.
• The 1967 review influenced the creation of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which prioritized low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets starting in the 1980s.
• As a result, Americans reduced fat intake while increasing consumption of refined carbs and sugars, often in ultra-processed foods marketed as “low-fat.”
• This shift tracks with rising obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates, as calorie intake climbed and nutrient-poor foods replaced healthier fats.

But wait, there’s more!

In 1948, The American Heart Association was basically a small private club of cardiologists, with a one-room office in New York staffed by volunteers, who liked to get together now and then and talk about heart stuff. Then they were given $1.5million ($20m in today’s money) by Proctor & Gamble to help them expand into the organization we know today.

Proctor & Gamble makes Crisco.

The conclusions and recommendations of the AHA have been consistent with those already mentioned. While there’s no smoking-gun evidence of direct collusion or manipulation between P&G and the AHA, it would be naive, IMO, to believe P&G acted solely out of the goodness of their hearts.

See what I did there? ;-).

The Takeaway: Whether it’s sugar, seed-oils, or animal fats that contribute the most to negative health outcomes is almost beside the point (and as usual, none of this is medical advice). The point is that a lot of what we’ve been told about health/diet for a couple generations now has been based on financial interests more than science.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share, and click all the things,

Dan