Researchers make bombshell discovery that sugar industry secretly funded Harvard scientists in the 1960s to shift blame on heart disease from sugar to saturated fat: A study published last Monday by University of California researchers based on only recently released internal documents shows that despite evidence of links between heart disease and sugar consumption emerging as early as the 1950s, a US-based sugar industry group, then known as the Sugar Research Foundation, paid three Harvard scientists to publish a 1965 study downplaying the link between heart disease and sugar and instead shifting the blame to saturated fat and cholesterol. It’s actually a little astonishing that this story is not getting the attention it deserves.

The source of funding of the study had never been disclosed until the publication of the study last week. Not only was the study incredibly influential on shaping thinking about nutrition and heart disease, the sugar industry was able to further “derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” according to one of the study’s researchers quoted by the New York Times. Meanwhile here at home, we continue to subsidize both the sugar that ruins people’s health as well as all the health bills that arise later in life as a result. (Read ‘How the sugar industry paid scientists to shift blame to saturated fat’ in the New York Times and / or the full study published last week on the 1965 report)