Sugar Coated — How the Sugar Industry Managed to Dupe the World for Decades from Dr. Mercola
Sugar Coated — How the Sugar Industry Managed to Dupe the World for Decades from Dr. Mercola
July 21, 2018 • 51,017views
Edition: English
Story at-a-glance
Thousands of
studies spanning many decades show excess sugar damages your health, yet
the sugar industry successfully buried the evidence and misdirected the
public with manipulated science
“Sugar Coated”
investigates the sugar industry’s once secret PR campaign, showing it
normalized excessive consumption by deflecting evidence implicating
sugar as a cause of ill health
The
manufactured uncertainty and lack of scientific consensus is what has
allowed the sugar industry to thrive while health statistics have tanked
A 2016 paper
examined the links between funding and study outcomes. Of the 60
studies, the 26 that found no link between sugary drinks and obesity or
diabetes were all funded by the beverage industry; of the 34 that did
find a relationship, only one had received industry funding
Seventy-four percent of packaged foods contain added sugars, which hide under 61 different names, many of which are unfamiliar
By Dr. Mercola
Thousands of studies spanning many decades show excess sugar damages your health,1
yet the sugar industry successfully buried the evidence and misdirected
the public with manipulated science. According to the sugar industry,
sugar is a harmless source of energy and may even be an important part
of a healthy “balanced” diet.
Dr. Cristin Kearns, a dentist and fellow at the University of California, made headlines when she published a paper2 detailing the sugar industry’s historical influence on dietary recommendations. Evidence also shows how the sugar industry
influenced the scientific agenda of the National Institute of Dental
Research (now the National Institute of Dental and Cranial Research),
which back in 1971 created a national caries program, downplaying any
links between sugar consumption and dental caries.3
The documentary, “Sugar Coated” — which features Kearns, investigative journalist Gary Taubes, author of “The Case Against Sugar,”
and Dr. Robert Lustig, a leading expert on sugar metabolism and
obesity — investigates the sugar industry’s once secret PR campaign,
showing how it normalized excessive consumption by deflecting evidence
implicating sugar as a cause of ill health. As noted in the film’s
summary:4
“In order to continue sweetening the world’s food supply, thus
securing continued profits, the sugar industry turned to the very same
deceptions and tactics lifted from the tobacco industry. Using big
sugar’s own internal documents on this strategy, ‘Sugar Coated’ reveals
the well-oiled tricks of the trade to confuse the public about what is
really driving the global pandemic of obesity, diabetes and heart
disease.”
Processed Food Is the Primary Source of Added Sugars
In the past three decades, obesity rates have doubled and Type 2 diabetes
has tripled. How did this happen? Evidence implicating sugar has
steadily mounted, but as noted by Taubes, definitive proof has remained
elusive. The lack of indisputable proof — and the manufactured lack of
consensus — is what has kept the sugar industry motoring forward, at
each turn deflecting suspicions by pointing out conflicting evidence.
Fueling uncertainty has been the primary defense strategy that has
allowed the sugar industry to thrive while health statistics plummet.
“If the evidence gets definitive, they’re done,” Taubes says. Lustig, a
pediatric endocrinologist, teaches that sugar — when consumed in the
excess amounts we’re consuming today — acts as a metabolic poison.
Lustig doesn’t really see himself as the “anti-sugar guy,” stressing he’s really anti-processed food. The thing about processed foods
is they contain massive amounts of added sugar. Seventy-four percent
of packaged foods contain added sugars, which hide under 61 different
names, many of which are unfamiliar. Examples include barley malt,
dextrose, maltose and rice syrup, just to name a few.
Metabolically, however, there’s no difference between these sugars,
Lustig says. Even health foods and baby foods can contain shockingly
high amounts of processed sugars.5
Take Krave Jerky, for example. A modest size bag (3.5 ounces) of Krave
Chili Lime Jerky contains a whopping 39 grams of sugar.6
What Is Moderation?
Lustig stresses it’s the excessive consumption of sugar that is
dangerous, not the sugar in and of itself. But how much is too much? At
which point does it become a “poison”? Sugar in “moderation,” he says,
would be 6 to 9 teaspoons (25 to 38 grams) of added sugar a day.
This is about the max that your body can safely and effectively
process. Europeans consume, on average, 17 teaspoons of added sugar a
day. The American average is 19.5 teaspoons a day. For historical
perspective, in 1812, people ate approximately 9 grams or just over 2
teaspoons of sugar per day.7
According to a 2014 study,8
10 percent of Americans consume 25 percent or more of their daily
calories in the form of added sugars, and those who consume 21 percent
or more of their daily calories in the form of sugar are twice as
likely to die from heart disease compared to those who get 7 percent or
less of their daily calories from added sugar.
The risk was nearly tripled among those who consumed 25 percent or
more of their calories from sugar. That means at least 10 percent of
the adult population in the U.S. are in this tripled-risk category.
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Type 2 diabetes9
and heart disease are not the only ramifications of a high-sugar diet.
By triggering insulin resistance, excessive sugar consumption drives
virtually all chronic diseases, including nonalcoholic fatty liver
disease,10 cancer and dementia.11,12 Research13
shows even mild elevation of blood sugar — a level of around 105 or
110 — is associated with an elevated risk for Alzheimer’s.
Moderating your sugar intake is extremely difficult, if not impossible,
if you’re eating processed foods and snacks. The film shines much
needed light on the fraud that passes for “healthy snacks,” such as
fruit gummies, which contain sugar derived from concentrated fruit
juice, water and a few added vitamins. While the sugar is derived from
fruit, there’s nothing left of the nutrients in the whole fruit. You
might as well just give your child a few sugar cubes. There’s really no
difference.
How and Why Sugar Replaced Fat
The records unearthed by Kearns reveal that as far back as 1964 — a
time when researchers had begun suspecting a relationship between
high-sugar diets and heart disease — John Hickson, a sugar industry
executive, introduced a plan for how to influence public opinion. Using
the same tactics employed by the tobacco industry, Hickson’s plan was
to counter adverse findings with industry-funded research, along with
directed “information and legislative programs.” “Then we can publish
the data and refute our detractors,” he wrote.
One of the strategies used to deflect accusations that sugar caused
disease was to shift the blame to saturated fat. In the early 1970s, the
sugar industry faced proposed sugar legislation that would impose
limits on the sweet stuff.
They also worried about the potential impact of “Pure White and
Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It,” a book
published in 1972 by British nutritionist John Yudkin,
in which he presented decades of research pointing at dietary sugar,
not fat, as the underlying factor in obesity and diabetes.
As proposed by Hickson, the sugar industry countered Yudkin’s work with
a secretly funded white paper called “Sugar in the Diet of Man,” which
claimed sugar was not only safe but actually important for health.
Again, the key to success laid in preventing a consensus from taking
root. As long as there was confusion and uncertainty about sugar’s role
in health, regulators were forced to give sugar a free pass.
Sugar Apologists and Defenders Bought and Paid for by Industry
Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, who chaired the department of nutrition at
Harvard, played a key role in defending the sugar industry and
disseminating its propaganda, all while hiding his close ties to the
industry. Stare spoke out against critics on radio and television,
claiming breakfast cereal with milk was a healthier breakfast choice
than bacon and eggs, for example.
Another major sugar apologist was Ancel Keyes who, with industry
funding, helped destroy Yudkin’s reputation by labeling him a quack.
The smear campaign was a huge success, bringing sugar research to a
screeching halt.
Another Harvard-based nutrition scientist identified in Kearns'
historical analysis as someone paid to produce research for the sugar
industry was Mark Hegsted, Ph.D. In 1977, while heading up the
nutrition department at the United States Department of Agriculture,
Hegsted helped draft an early document that eventually became the U.S.
dietary guidelines.
In the decades since, U.S. health officials have urged Americans to adopt a low-fat diet to prevent heart disease;
as a result, people switched to processed low-fat, high-sugar
foods instead. This, it turns out, is the real recipe for heart
disease, yet by taking control of and shaping the scientific
discussion, the sugar and processed food industries managed to keep
these facts under wraps all these years. The end result is clearly
visible in the health statistics of today.
Sugar’s Law of Attraction: The Bliss Point
With saturated fat
enlisted as the dietary villain, the processed food industry had to
figure out how to remove the fat while maintaining taste. The solution
was to add sugar. The ill-advised low-fat craze is a major reason why
processed foods are loaded with so much added sugar. Another reason has
to do with the creation of food addiction.
The food industry goes to great lengths to scientifically calculate the
exact combination of ingredients that will make you crave a product,
known as the Bliss Point.
Howard Moskowitz, Ph.D., a longtime food industry consultant, is known
as “Dr. Bliss.” A Harvard-trained mathematician, Moskowitz tests
people’s reactions and finds the optimal amount of sugar for a product.14
Moskowitz’s path to mastery began when he was hired by the U.S. Army to
research how to get soldiers to consume more rations in the field.
Over time, soldiers were not consuming adequate rations, finding their
ready-to-eat meals so boring that they’d toss them half-eaten, and not
get all the calories they needed. Through this research, Moskowitz
discovered “sensory-specific satiety.” What this means is, big flavors
tend to overwhelm your brain, which responds by suppressing your desire
to eat more.
However, this sensory-specific satiety is overridden by complex flavor
profiles that pique your taste buds enough to be alluring, but don’t
have a distinct, overriding single flavor that tells your brain to stop
eating. The magic formula gives you “the bliss point,” enabling the
processed food industry to make very deliberate efforts to get you to
overeat.
Sugar Limits Finally Included in US Dietary Guidelines
While we still have a long way to go, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans include the recommendation to limit sugar to 10 percent of your total daily calories.15
For a 2,000 calorie diet this amounts to 10 to 12 teaspoons, or just
over the amount found in one 12-ounce can of regular Coke. Based on the
evidence from some studies, even this amount can trigger health
problems, but it’s certainly better than no limit at all. Other health
organizations have gone even further.
The National Institutes of Health now recommends kids between the
ages of 4 and 8 limit their added sugar to a maximum of 3 teaspoons a
day (12 grams). Children aged 9 and older should stay below 8
teaspoons. The American Heart Association recommends limiting daily
added sugar intake to:16,17
9 teaspoons (38 grams) for men
6 teaspoons (25 grams) for women
6 teaspoons (25 grams) for toddlers and teens between the ages of 2 and 18
Zero added sugars for kids under the age of 2
Twenty-five grams of sugar per day is my recommended limit for men
and women alike, with the added caveat that if you have insulin or
leptin resistance (overweight, diabetic, high blood pressure or taking a
statin drug), you’d be wise to restrict your total fructose
consumption to as little as 15 grams per day until you’ve normalized
your insulin and leptin levels.
Sugar Industry’s Response to Sugar Limits
Not surprisingly, the sugar industry’s answer to all of these sugar limits was to create yet another study18 to refute the validity of the recommendations and keep the uncertainty going.19,20,21,22 As reported by CBS,23
“The study from McMaster University claims that the evidence for prior
knowledge in how sugar intake is proportionate with weight gain, across
nine public health guidelines, is ‘low quality.’”
The review was funded by the North American branch of the
International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a trade group
representing the Coca-Cola Co., Dr Pepper Snapple Group, the Hershey
Company, Mars, Nestlé, PepsiCo and many others. In conclusion, these
industry-funded science reviewers found that:
“Guidelines on dietary sugar do not meet criteria for
trustworthy recommendations and are based on low-quality evidence.
Public health officials (when promulgating these recommendations) and
their public audience (when considering dietary behavior) should be
aware of these limitations …
At present, there seems to be no reliable evidence indicating
that any of the recommended daily caloric thresholds for sugar intake
are strongly associated with negative health effects. The results from
this review should be used to promote improvement in the development of
trustworthy guidelines on sugar intake.”
Ironically, the only “limitation” listed for this study24
was that “The authors conducted the study independent of the funding
source, which is primarily supported by the food and agriculture
industry.” Essentially, what they were saying is that, yes, the study
was funded by the food industry, but trust us, we were completely
impartial.
A corrected version of the disclosure statement revealed ILSI
actually both reviewed and approved the scope of the protocol for the
study.25
AP News also discovered that one of the authors, Joanne Slavin, a
professor at University of Minnesota, failed to disclose funding in the
amount of $25,000 from Coca-Cola in 2014.
Slavin also did not disclose a grant received from Quaker Oats, owned
by PepsiCo, nor did she include her work on a 2012 ILSI-funded paper
on sugar guidelines. Meanwhile, she did disclose a grant from the
Mushroom Council.
Review Shows Massive Research Bias Based on Funding
If you’re at all inclined to take Slavin and her coauthors on their
word, consider the following study published in November 2016: The
paper, “Do Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Cause Obesity and Diabetes?
Industry and the Manufacture of Scientific Controversy,”26 reviewed 60 studies published between 2001 and 2016 to examine the links between funding and study outcomes.
“We comprehensively surveyed the literature to determine whether
experimental studies that found no association between sugar-sweetened
beverages and obesity- and diabetes-related outcomes (negative
studies) are more likely than positive studies to have received
financial support from this industry,” they write.
The results? Of the 60 studies, the 26 that found no link between
sugary drinks and obesity or diabetes were all funded by the beverage
industry; of the 34 that did find a relationship, only one had received
industry funding. In conclusion, they noted that: “This industry seems
to be manipulating contemporary scientific processes to create
controversy and advance their business interests at the expense of the
public’s health.”
Some of the studies giving sugar a free pass have industry fingerprints clearly visible all over them. For example, one paper27
came to the highly unlikely conclusion that eating candy may help
prevent weight gain. The source of the funding reveals the basis for
such a bizarre conclusion: The National Confectioners Association,
which represents candy makers like Butterfingers, Hershey and Skittles.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi-backed research has also come to the highly
improbable and irresponsible conclusion that drinking diet soda is more
helpful for weight loss than pure water.28
When you consider that following the proposed sugar guidelines
(restricting sugar to 5 or 10 percent of daily calories) would cut junk
food companies’ profits by half,29
it’s easy to see why they’re willing to go to such obnoxious lengths to
try to mislead you about the science. Greed is no excuse, however, and
it’s high time everyone stopped buying into the sugar industry’s
carefully plotted misdirection campaigns.
Crush Your Sugar Addiction
Sugar causes very real damage to your body and cells, and the
addiction to the substance is also very real. There are several
strategies you can use to reduce or eliminate your intake of added
sugars, while still enjoying your meals and feeling satisfied after
eating.
Educate yourself on the health impacts of sugar
Making permanent changes to your lifestyle and nutritional choices
is easier when you know the why behind the change. You can see a
quick list of the 76 different ways sugar negatively impacts your
health in my previous article, “The Truth About Sugar Addiction.”
Reduce net carbs
Your net carbs are calculated by taking the total grams of carbs
and subtracting the total grams of fiber. By keeping your net carbs
below 100 grams per day, and for a healthier diet as low as 50 grams
per day, you will reduce your cravings for sweets. To learn more,
including the importance of cycling in higher amounts of net carbs
once you’ve become an efficient fat burner, see “Burn Fat for Fuel.”
Eat real food
If a food is boxed, canned or bottled, it’s likely also been
processed and may include added sugar. Whole, organic, non-GMO foods
provide your body with the nutrition you need to function optimally
and natural sugars bound to fiber that reduces your net carbs.
Read labels
On processed foods you do purchase, scour the label for
ingredients that represent sugar to evaluate the total amount. The
less sugar you eat, the less you’ll crave.
Use safer sweeteners
Not all sugar substitutes are created equally. Avoid using
artificial sweeteners such as aspartame. Safer alternatives include
Stevia, Lo Han Guo (also spelled Luo Han Kuo), and pure glucose
(dextrose). Contrary to fructose, glucose can be used directly by
every cell in your body and as such is a far safer sugar alternative.
It will, however, raise your net carb intake.
Reduce the sugar you add gradually
If going cold turkey hasn’t worked for you in the past, try slowly
reducing the amount of sugar you add to your drinks. This helps
give your taste buds time to adjust to drinking your favorite tea or
coffee without the added sweetener.
Increase healthy fat intake
Fat increases satiety, reducing cravings for something sweet
afterward. Avocados, coconut oil, nuts and seeds increase your
healthy fat content, fill you up and reduce your sweet cravings.
Include fermented foods
Fermented foods
support your digestive health and improve your gut microbiome, and the
sour taste naturally helps reduce your sweet cravings.
Try Turbo Tapping
Emotional and stress eating is not uncommon. Using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), you can address your stress levels and the discomfort you may feel from giving up junk foods in your diet. Turbo tapping
is a form of EFT designed specifically for sugar addiction and is
well worth a try if you’re struggling to give up soda and other
sweets.
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