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The literature review heavily criticized studies linking sucrose to heart disease, while ignoring limitations of studies investigating dietary fats.

Yet the industryвЂ™s funding and role were not disclosed in the final NEJM publication. To conduct the literature review, the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars, then set the reviewвЂ™s objective, contributed articles to be included, and received drafts. Mark Hegsted, one of the Harvard researchers who produced the literature review. The UCSF researchers analyzed more than 340 documents, totaling 1,582 pages of text, between the sugar industry and two individuals: Roger Adams, then a professor of organic chemistry who served on scientific advisory boards for the sugar industry and D.

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вЂњThe literature review helped shape not only public opinion on what causes heart problems but also the scientific communityвЂ™s view of how to evaluate dietary risk factors for heart disease,вЂќ said lead author Cristin Kearns, DDS, MBA, who discovered the industry documents. It concluded there was вЂњno doubtвЂќ that the only dietary intervention required to prevent coronary heart disease was to reduce dietary cholesterol and substitute polyunsaturated fat for saturated fat in the American diet. Meanwhile, evidence linking sugar consumption to high blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels вЂ“ both thought to be risk factors for coronary heart disease вЂ“ began to emerge in the scientific literature and popular press.ДЄfter a 1965 spike in media attention to the heart disease risks of sucrose, the sugar industry commissioned Project 226, a literature review written by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health Nutrition Department, which was published in the highly respected New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 1967. The trade organization represented 30 international members.

The internal industry documents, which were found in public archives, showed that a sugar industry trade organization recognized as early as 1954 that if Americans adopted low-fat diets, then per-capita consumption of sucrose would increase by more than one-third. Sugar Papers Reveal Industry Role in Shifting National Heart Disease Focus to Saturated FatДЄ newly discovered cache of industry documents revealed that the sugar industry began working closely with nutrition scientists in the mid-1960s to single out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease and to downplay evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor.ДЄn analysis of those papers by researchers at UC San Francisco appears September 12, 2016, in JAMA Internal Medicine. Here is the UCSF press release on the paper.

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The full paper is available for free here. Cristin Kearns, Laura Schmidt, and I published вЂњSugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry DocumentsвЂќ in JAMA Internal Medicine.