Appetites: Sugar industry apparently funded fat-blaming research
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In the battle between sugar and fat over which is worse for you, sugar apparently had money in the fight.
In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly-published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The article draws on internal documents to show that an industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to "refute" concerns about sugar's role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding.
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, editor for Mpls. St Paul Magazine, joined MPR News' Tom Crann to talk about the article.
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