Speaker 1: If you were a mystery writer, I doubt you'd set
Speaker 1: the opening of your page turning thriller at a dental conference.
Speaker 1: I don't recall bad PowerPoint presentations or stained lecture room
Speaker 1: chairs popping up on the pages of Agatha Christie or
Speaker 1: Dan Brown. But it was at a conference about the
Speaker 1: links between gum disease and diabetes where dentist Kristin Kern's
Speaker 1: life tilted on its axis.
Speaker 2: So at this conference there were two keynote speakers. The
Speaker 2: first was representing the US Centers for Disease Control, and
Speaker 2: she handed out a brochure and I opened it up.
Speaker 2: It was all about decrease calories, decrease fat, decreased salt,
Speaker 2: but it didn't actually say the words decrease sugar, which
Speaker 2: I found very unusual.
Speaker 1: Christen is puzzled. That seems awfully strange. It's a dental conference,
Speaker 1: after all. Then the next keynote speaker steps up, a
Speaker 1: representative from the National Diabetes Education Program. This guy also
Speaker 1: hands out a brochure, the Stop and Go Fast Food
Speaker 1: Nutrition Guide. If you've got to eat fast food, here
Speaker 1: are the healthy options.
Speaker 2: And I flipped open to the drinks page, and I
Speaker 2: noticed that Lippt and brisk sweet tea got a green light.
Speaker 1: A green light as in, it's a healthy choice.
Speaker 2: And it had something like forty four grams of sugar
Speaker 2: in it, and I really just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Forty four grams of sugar. That's more than the recommended
Speaker 1: amount of adult should consume in an entire day. So
Speaker 1: this speaker is packing up and preparing to leave when Kristen,
Speaker 1: who's sitting way at the back of the ballroom, springs
Speaker 1: out of her.
Speaker 2: Chair and chased him down and caught him and said,
Speaker 2: how can you possibly rank sweet tea as a healthy drink?
Speaker 2: And his answer to me was there is no evidence
Speaker 2: linking sugar to chronic disease. And I was stunned. I
Speaker 2: was absolutely stunned.
Speaker 1: Kristin is thinking this is a dental conference. Sugar causes
Speaker 1: tooth decay, that is a chronic disease, and it's also
Speaker 1: been linked to heart disease and diabetes.
Speaker 2: In my head, I'm thinking this guy's nuts. So I
Speaker 2: looked back at him, I think, with a blank stare,
Speaker 2: and he just turned around and walked out the door,
Speaker 2: and I was just really shocked. It really kind of
Speaker 2: shook me. Up and I didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 2: So coming back from this dental conference, I just really
Speaker 2: couldn't let this go.
Speaker 1: Kristin comes home still astonished that a keynote speaker at
Speaker 1: an industry conference would say there is no link between
Speaker 1: sugar and chronic disease.
Speaker 2: And so when I came home, really the first thing
Speaker 2: I did was actually dig out my old textbooks. I
Speaker 2: got out my biochemistry textbook and looked at Glycollis's again
Speaker 2: and like, did I miss something? But soon realized that
Speaker 2: there's probably much more to the story. So I started
Speaker 2: getting interested in the sugar industry.
Speaker 1: Kristen starts searching around on the internet, looking at the
Speaker 1: sugar industries trade groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got pretty obsessed, I would have to
Speaker 2: say with this, especially when I started to find real clues.
Speaker 2: So I actually cut off my cable TV subscription. No
Speaker 2: more TV. I was going to dedicate my free time
Speaker 2: outside of work to really look into this.
Speaker 1: Why was Kristin doing this Well, at this point, she
Speaker 1: was working for a dental healthcare provider, but previously had
Speaker 1: been working as a dentist at clinic serving low income populations.
Speaker 1: It was a tough gig She'd see patient after patient
Speaker 1: with serious cavities or even missing teeth. Maybe this sugar
Speaker 1: mystery was part of the bigger issue. In the end,
Speaker 1: she made a major decision.
Speaker 2: Really wanted to dedicate myself to this, So yes, I
Speaker 2: actually quit my job to dig into this more.
Speaker 1: To crack this case, Kristin would go through a metamorphosis.
Speaker 1: She'd transform from dentist to detective and dive into the
Speaker 1: secretive realm of sugar. Albeit her crime scenes were library
Speaker 1: storerooms and her smoking guns were Manila folders, but her discoveries,
Speaker 1: well they're incredible. She'd eventually uncover evidence revealing the canny
Speaker 1: strategies Big Sugar has used to protect its image and
Speaker 1: harness the power of public relations and influence the very
Speaker 1: food you eat. This episode, we step away from the
Speaker 1: lawsuits because to understand how these cases went, you have
Speaker 1: to really understand not only the people, but the industry
Speaker 1: the lawyers were taking on. I'm Celeste Heedley and from iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: Imagine Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel.
Speaker 1: This is Big Sugar Episode seven, Bittersweet By two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, Kristin Kerns is a full time, unemployed investigator
Speaker 1: on the trail of the sugar industry. She'd been scrutinizing
Speaker 1: the world of sugar for two years at this point.
Speaker 1: Her search has led her to a library in Colorado
Speaker 1: and to stumbling upon old records for this sugar beat company.
Speaker 2: I typed in sugar into the local library catalog and
Speaker 2: I noticed references to the Great Western Sugar Company. And
Speaker 2: this company had gone out of business in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: and they for some reason decided to donate some of
Speaker 2: their company records to local libraries.
Speaker 1: Kristin heads to the small archive room of the Colorado Library.
Speaker 2: It's a very kind of sterile environment, and you have
Speaker 2: to put all your belongings in a locker and only
Speaker 2: use a pencil. They're very worried about you damaging the documents.
Speaker 1: The boxes are all laid out.
Speaker 2: And I just picked the first one, and the first
Speaker 2: folder that I opened had confidential typed in all caps.
Speaker 2: And I think I had to like just take a
Speaker 2: moment and sit down and really take in that moment
Speaker 2: of will you know, all this time of thinking there's
Speaker 2: something there and then actually finding that there was something
Speaker 2: there was a big moment for me. That was the
Speaker 2: moment where I sort of couldn't believe that I actually
Speaker 2: found this kind of hard evidence of the sugar industries
Speaker 2: public relations campaigns that hadn't been brought to light yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, whoa hold your horses? This discovery, Well, it's major,
Speaker 1: and it dates back some seventy years ago and goes
Speaker 1: way beyond dentistry.
Speaker 3: It strikes without mourning of ten men.
Speaker 4: We can expect five to get it, but we can't
Speaker 4: say who, or when or why.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties, America was under siege. The nation
Speaker 1: wasn't threatened by a foreign adversary, but by an indiscernible,
Speaker 1: stealthy enemy. Heart disease rates of the condition were rising steeply,
Speaker 1: and it burst into the public consciousness when one Saturday
Speaker 1: afternoon in nineteen fifty five, at the Cherry Hills Country
Speaker 1: Club golf course, President Dwight D. Eisenhower began complaining of
Speaker 1: indigestion around the ninth hole, which led to the.
Speaker 5: President was helped into a car in the early morning hours,
Speaker 5: rushed along this street to the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital, and
Speaker 5: placed in an oxygen tech.
Speaker 1: It turned out not to be from the Hamburger he'd
Speaker 1: eaten earlier in the day, but a massive cardiac arrest.
Speaker 5: His illness revealed once again America's unpreparedness to deal adequately
Speaker 5: with such an emergency.
Speaker 1: Why were so many people suddenly having heart attacks? Even
Speaker 1: the president had been struck down? What was really going on?
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, evidence started to leak out suggesting
Speaker 1: there might be a link between heart disease and sugar consumption.
Speaker 1: When I say sugar, I don't mean the sugars we
Speaker 1: naturally find in whole foods, but those sugars which come
Speaker 1: from beets, cane, corn, and even honey. The thing that
Speaker 1: scientists and doctors were focused on were the molecules fructose, sucrose,
Speaker 1: and dextrose when they're added to our food in large quantities.
Speaker 1: And there was one man in particular sounding the alarm.
Speaker 2: John Yudkin, and Yudkin was of the opinion that sugar
Speaker 2: was a cause of coronary heart disease.
Speaker 5: This is BBC television.
Speaker 6: You shouldn't eat sugar full stop. But if you insist
Speaker 6: on eating sugar, there are some sorts of brown sugar
Speaker 6: that do seem to be a nutrition le Superior.
Speaker 1: Doctor John Yudkin was a gifted researcher and hyper focused
Speaker 1: on the area of public health. In fact, he ended
Speaker 1: up helping build the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: College in London. In nineteen seventy two, John Yudkin dropped
Speaker 1: a bomb on the sugar industry. It was the biggest
Speaker 1: weapon in the academic arsenal. A well researched book. It
Speaker 1: was called Pure White and Deadly.
Speaker 6: Which was describing the dangers as he saw it, of sugar.
Speaker 6: Of course, he didn't mean the odd tea spoon of
Speaker 6: sugar that one might have in one's coffee a couple
Speaker 6: of times a day. He wasn't thinking of that at all.
Speaker 6: He was thinking of large quantities of sugar. This is
Speaker 6: Michael Yudkin, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry the University of Oxford.
Speaker 6: He's also the son of John Judkin, whom I understand
Speaker 6: you're making a program about. Pure White and Deadly is
Speaker 6: a book which looked into questions of what happened when
Speaker 6: people from populations who had typically eaten relatively little sugar
Speaker 6: moved to populations where they were exposed to more sugar.
Speaker 1: For example, John Yadkin looked at studies about people from
Speaker 1: Yemen who moved to Israel and started eating loads more sugar.
Speaker 1: Decades later, what was going on with their health? More
Speaker 1: and more people were getting chronic diseases like heart disease
Speaker 1: and diabetes. Then he began doing his own experiments on
Speaker 1: animals and humans. He found that sugar consumption led to
Speaker 1: raised blood levels of triglycerides that's a technical term for fat,
Speaker 1: which is considered a risk factor for heart disease, and
Speaker 1: then sugar also raised insulin levels, linking it to type
Speaker 1: two diabetes. These were early observation rather than concrete explanations.
Speaker 6: But it started him off thinking that there's something about
Speaker 6: sugar which is not only useless, but actually positively harmful
Speaker 6: in some way.
Speaker 1: So a bit more about John Yudkin, because he'll come
Speaker 1: to be central to the story. John Yudkin grew up
Speaker 1: in the East End of London.
Speaker 6: His family were very poor. His father died when he
Speaker 6: was six. He was one of five brothers, and he
Speaker 6: really had to make his own way.
Speaker 1: Through leapfrogging on scholarships. He ended up at the prestigious
Speaker 1: Cambridge University.
Speaker 6: It was not by any means common for poor children
Speaker 6: to finish up at Cambridge He was very clever, very bright,
Speaker 6: and extremely hard working. But also he was a fun person.
Speaker 6: He had a great sense of humor.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a disciplinarian.
Speaker 6: I would go to a birthday party and he would
Speaker 6: say something like, of course there'll be lots of cakes
Speaker 6: and biscuits at the birth day party, but I'd rather
Speaker 6: if he went easy on them.
Speaker 1: Michael reminds me of his dad. Firstly, he too offered
Speaker 1: cookies when the production team met him. He's not militant
Speaker 1: about sugar either. And secondly, he and his father look
Speaker 1: quite similar. Black hair, glasses, and there's pretty much always
Speaker 1: at least a hint of a smile on his face,
Speaker 1: crinkling his eyes into half moons. Similarly his dad.
Speaker 6: He was a cheerful person, which was lucky considering what
Speaker 6: happened later, but considering the way he was treated later.
Speaker 1: John Yudkins's book Pure White and Deadly sparked a lot
Speaker 1: of interest when it was published, which was bad news
Speaker 1: for sugar's reputation. Plus, at nearly the exact same time,
Speaker 1: there was a major FDA review looking into whether foods
Speaker 1: like sugar could be called general recognized as safe in
Speaker 1: their dietary guidelines. The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration,
Speaker 1: is in charge of making sure the food's sold to
Speaker 1: us here in the US isn't harmful. If they took
Speaker 1: sugar off their safe list, it could spell the end
Speaker 1: of the industry. Imagine every time you bought something with
Speaker 1: sugar in it, it would have a label warning you
Speaker 1: about the dangers of eating it. Basically, in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the heat was on sugar and they went into disaster
Speaker 1: control and it all started with the Sugar Association.
Speaker 2: The Sugar Association is a trade association that's based in Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: and they represent cane and beat sugar growers and producers
Speaker 2: on issues related to sugar and health. So any policy,
Speaker 2: any potential regulation that has anything to do with sugar
Speaker 2: and health, they are monitoring those activities and trying to
Speaker 2: influence them so that it doesn't impact sales of sugar.
Speaker 1: The Sugar Association has been funded by various companies over
Speaker 1: the years. These days, its biggest members include some names
Speaker 1: that might be familiar to you by now, Florida Crystals
Speaker 1: and the Sugarcane Growers Cooperative of Florida. The public face
Speaker 1: of the Sugar Association is all well and good, but
Speaker 1: Kristin Kerns was more interested in what they weren't saying publicly.
Speaker 1: She's flipping through that Manila folder in the Colorado Library
Speaker 1: Archives and she stumbles on a pile of documents, letters, memos,
Speaker 1: reports from around the nineteen seventies, when the industry was
Speaker 1: freaking out about the bad press, the FDA review and
Speaker 1: books like Yudkins.
Speaker 2: And they began to get concerned.
Speaker 1: The documents spelled out their game plan.
Speaker 2: They were watching John Yudkin in particular. In fact, in
Speaker 2: some of the earlier documents, the way they talked about
Speaker 2: it was that it was an anti sugar infection. They
Speaker 2: had to exterminate that infection. That was their mission. So
Speaker 2: it was how they put together their public relations campaigns
Speaker 2: and everything that they did to convince the public, convince policymakers,
Speaker 2: convince the media that sugar was safe for consumption. Back
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies, they were thinking, we could do
Speaker 2: a public opinion poll. They thought maybe we could sponsor
Speaker 2: a symposium to kind of take down John Yudkin, And
Speaker 2: they started thinking about funding their own heart disease research.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen seventy five and nineteen eighty the Sugar Association
Speaker 1: spent six hundred and fifty five thousand dollars about three
Speaker 1: million in today's dollars on seventeen studies designed as the
Speaker 1: document's Kristen found, put it to maintain research as a
Speaker 1: main prop of the industry's defense. So the association pulled
Speaker 1: out the cash bazouka and who got showered and dough Well,
Speaker 1: most of it apparently went to those scientists whose studies
Speaker 1: seemed explicitly designed to exonerate sugar. If you take a
Speaker 1: look at the internal documents, Kristin found in one example,
Speaker 1: a researcher wanted to know if sugar could boost serotonin
Speaker 1: and prove of therapeutic value, as in the relief of depression,
Speaker 1: Like could scarfing down candy make you feel better when
Speaker 1: you're depressed? Look, if you've ever sought comfort from a
Speaker 1: pint of ice cream post a breakup, you can probably
Speaker 1: answer that one for yourself. These first documents were just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. Kristin kept digging and digging,
Speaker 1: traveling around the country, going through more archives and more documents.
Speaker 2: Really, my whole focus became trying to uncover what these
Speaker 2: documents were about. And this was not something that I
Speaker 2: really had training in. So I just started reading through
Speaker 2: these documents. I paid for photocopies of them, I took
Speaker 2: them home. I had them in piles all over my
Speaker 2: dining room table, trying to read through them and piece
Speaker 2: the story together of what was going on.
Speaker 1: Kristen has a kind of composed tenacity. When I asked
Speaker 1: a question, she often laughs, gives a brief response, and
Speaker 1: then pauses before delivering a considered, more articulate answer. So
Speaker 1: during this time, was she getting a bit obsessive obsessive?
Speaker 2: Yes. Once I had the clues that there was really
Speaker 2: some manipulation going on behind the scenes, that just made
Speaker 2: me even more motivated to continue on. And it seemed
Speaker 2: like there really wasn't anybody else talking about this kind
Speaker 2: of material, And the more documents that I found, and
Speaker 2: the more evidence there was to tell these various stories,
Speaker 2: and so it just kept, you know, pushing me on.
Speaker 2: It is something that I just really wanted to get
Speaker 2: out into the world more.
Speaker 1: After the break, Kristin Current had stumbled on something major
Speaker 1: Big Sugar's pr playbook. Step one fund new research that
Speaker 1: might make sugar look better. Check Step two, poo poo
Speaker 1: your opponents.
Speaker 6: There was a quite clear campaign on the part of
Speaker 6: the sugar manufacturers to denigrate my father's work and poopoo
Speaker 6: it and say no, there's nothing in it here. You
Speaker 6: can just as be in his bonnet about it, and
Speaker 6: nobody really believes it, accept him and a couple of
Speaker 6: other deluded individuals whom he has seduced into this way
Speaker 6: of thinking.
Speaker 1: Being bad mouth might not say that extreme, but in
Speaker 1: the scientific world these were serious accusations. After Pure White
Speaker 1: and Deadly was published, the British Sugar Bureau, the UK
Speaker 1: version of the Sugar Association, sent a statement to newspapers,
Speaker 1: magazines and radio saying the book is considered to not
Speaker 1: only be unscientific in its approach, but to contain very
Speaker 1: little more than a number of emotional assertions based on
Speaker 1: doctor Yuedkins's own theory that sugar is the main cause
Speaker 1: of many diseases and should be banned. Another group, the
Speaker 1: World Sugar Research Organization, described it as science fiction. Ouch.
Speaker 1: We actually asked the World Sugar Research Organization about this
Speaker 1: and a spokesperson gave us this statement. Professor Yudkin's views
Speaker 1: towards sugar were widely known and differed from the views
Speaker 1: of wsro's Director General at the time nearly forty five
Speaker 1: years ago. The commentary by the Director General at the time,
Speaker 1: who was now deceased, was considered by Professor Yudkin as
Speaker 1: an attack on his reputation, was retracted and WSRO settled
Speaker 1: with Professor Yudkin within the laws of libel in the UK,
Speaker 1: with a payment offered towards Professor Yudkin's legal costs. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't just trade groups saying this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's Michael Yudkin again.
Speaker 6: There are examples of remarks that are made, particularly by
Speaker 6: an adversary of my father's.
Speaker 1: Someone whose voice the sugar industry found very useful.
Speaker 6: The adversary of my father, who was particularly virulent in
Speaker 6: this respect, was called Ansel keys Hi.
Speaker 4: Doctor ansel keyes Am a physiologist. My specialty is diet
Speaker 4: and health. I have written several books on the subject,
Speaker 4: including the current bestseller Eat Well and Stay Well.
Speaker 1: Back when the US was first in the grip of
Speaker 1: a heart disease epidemic, there were two takes on the cause.
Speaker 1: In the red corner, John Yudkins said sugar. In the
Speaker 1: blue corner, Ansel keys said fat.
Speaker 4: I am presently engaged in a major experiment involving the
Speaker 4: health and eating habits of some ten thousand individuals scattered
Speaker 4: throughout the world. We are collecting data on all types,
Speaker 4: from African tribesmen to American businessmen. I have already had
Speaker 4: considerable effect on the diet of millions of Americans.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ansel Keys was a pioneer in the field of nutrition.
Speaker 1: He'd helped create the K rations, those meals that were
Speaker 1: carried into combat during World War Two. In fact, the
Speaker 1: K in k ration is for Keys.
Speaker 7: Now famous K Rations, the completely streamlined meal. Originally designed
Speaker 7: for paratroops, K proved ideal for tankbusters, commandos, and all
Speaker 7: isolated units.
Speaker 1: In the mid twentieth century, Ansel Keys oversaw a landmark
Speaker 1: study that looked at populations around the world to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of why Americans were dying of heart disease.
Speaker 1: He announced what he thought was the culprit for the
Speaker 1: scourge of heart disease, saturated fat.
Speaker 8: Well, it wasn't very long before its appears that there
Speaker 8: was some connection between corner heart disease and cholesterol and
Speaker 8: the blood. There was an important connection between the fats
Speaker 8: and the die, particularly the kinds of fats in the
Speaker 8: dye and cholesterol in the blood.
Speaker 1: That's Ansel Keys speaking when he was super old. He
Speaker 1: lived to one hundred. In the end, Ansel Keys became
Speaker 1: probably the first nutritionist celebrity. Imagine the stern face of
Speaker 1: a physiologist on the cover of Time magazine. His promotion
Speaker 1: of the Mediterranean diet is still a worldwide phenomenon. And
Speaker 1: you know when you walk down the aisles of your
Speaker 1: supermarket and see low fat this and low fat that, well,
Speaker 1: in part you probably have doctor Keys to thank for that.
Speaker 1: You can watch videos of doctor Keys on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: while we all know comment sections don't always bring out
Speaker 1: the best in humanity, you might be surprised to scroll
Speaker 1: down and read what people have said about him. Plenty
Speaker 1: law doctor Key's work, but others say Keys a disgrace,
Speaker 1: or this guy should get a Nobel Prize for ruining
Speaker 1: the lives of billions, and even he should be charged
Speaker 1: posthumously with mass murder. Why, well, you'll come to find out.
Speaker 4: So well, arel, doctor Ansel Keys, please hand up.
Speaker 1: Back in the seventies, when he's feud with John Yudkin
Speaker 1: was at its peak, Doctor Ansel Keys made.
Speaker 6: Remarks that are really beyond the bounds in my opinion
Speaker 6: of what is proper to say in terms of scientists
Speaker 6: that you disagree with. Like Judkin's work has no basis
Speaker 6: in fact, and although I have tried to counter it
Speaker 6: as best I can, the propaganda keeps on reverberating. Attacks
Speaker 6: of that sort were largely successful in rendering my father
Speaker 6: something of a figure of fun, in rendering him somebody
Speaker 6: who could be regarded as eccentric and whose views could
Speaker 6: be written off.
Speaker 1: Keys was chiming in alongside the sugar pr and trade
Speaker 1: associations to belittle John Yudkin's work. And this wasn't just
Speaker 1: a personal blow for John Yudkin. It impacted him professionally too.
Speaker 6: I think it certainly affected his career a lot. He
Speaker 6: would be invited to conferences and then at the last
Speaker 6: moment disinvited. One time he attended a conference and all
Speaker 6: the papers from that conference, including his, were to be
Speaker 6: published in a book, And then it suddenly discovered that
Speaker 6: his contribution to the conference was to be excluded from
Speaker 6: the book at the demand of the sugar people. His
Speaker 6: funding was put in jeopardy and finally cut. There were
Speaker 6: lots and lots of ways in which he was made
Speaker 6: to suffer from here for his views. My father was
Speaker 6: a man who was not easily depressed. I must say
Speaker 6: that if I had been subjected to that kind of language,
Speaker 6: I don't think I would have been as cheerful as
Speaker 6: my father was about it.
Speaker 1: He focused on his family, often taking his grandchildren out
Speaker 1: the things like the circus or the theater. John Yudkin
Speaker 1: died in nineteen ninety five. According to Michael, his greatest
Speaker 1: fear wasn't that his work had been erased, but what
Speaker 1: that could mean for people's health.
Speaker 6: That was very, very hard for him. When he saw
Speaker 6: this sort of disappearing before his eyes. That was extremely difficult.
Speaker 1: Alongside attacking people like Yudkin, the sugar industry also went
Speaker 1: a step further. In nineteen seventy five, an expert committee
Speaker 1: led by those supposedly at the cutting edge of public
Speaker 1: health research, published a literature review called Sugar in the
Speaker 1: Diet of Man. It critiqued evidence that linked sugar to
Speaker 1: chronic disease, and it was sent all over the country
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand copies to influential people, including reporters and policymakers.
Speaker 1: Along with the press release headlined scientists dispel sugar fears.
Speaker 1: The documents Kristen found revealed this series was funded by
Speaker 1: the sugar industry, but the report at the time didn't
Speaker 1: say that.
Speaker 2: And so when this Sugar in the Diet of Man
Speaker 2: series came out, it became this scientific evidence that the
Speaker 2: sugar industry could point to that was disconnected from their funding,
Speaker 2: disconnected from any of their fingerprints, and say, look at
Speaker 2: all of these prominent scientists who are claiming that there
Speaker 2: is no link between sugar and chronic disease.
Speaker 1: All this fed into that FDA report questioning the safety
Speaker 1: of sugar.
Speaker 2: And so when you read the report itself, you can
Speaker 2: see that there is evidence linking sugar to diabetes, for example.
Speaker 2: But then the report goes on to say, here are
Speaker 2: some other studies that showed that there is no link
Speaker 2: between sugar and diabetes, and those studies happened to be
Speaker 2: several that had been sponsored by the sugar industry.
Speaker 1: In the end, the FDA concluded.
Speaker 2: It basically said that there was no link between sugar
Speaker 2: and heart disease and diabetes and obesity did acknowledge a
Speaker 2: link between sugar and two decay. So they actually succeeded
Speaker 2: in influencing the food and Drug Administration.
Speaker 1: Let me spell it out here. According to the documents,
Speaker 1: Kristen found, the sugar industry paid scientists to conduct studies
Speaker 1: that made sugar look good, attacked people who said sugar
Speaker 1: could be unhealthy, then produced a massive report basically saying,
Speaker 1: look at all this evidence sugar isn't linked to these
Speaker 1: chronic diseases. Then the government relied on that report when
Speaker 1: making their recommendations about the very things you should eat.
Speaker 1: No one is saying that you shouldn't eat sugar at all,
Speaker 1: but there was no limit, no cap, no suggestion of
Speaker 1: how much you could healthily consume or the potential consequences
Speaker 1: of eating too much.
Speaker 2: I think the president of the Sugar Association at the
Speaker 2: time called it their scientific bible. They could use that
Speaker 2: FDA report to counter any other government effort to try
Speaker 2: to limit sugar consumption in various ways.
Speaker 1: Like here's a clip from a nineteen eighties documentary made
Speaker 1: by the Florida Sugarcane League, the trade association of Floridas
Speaker 1: sugar growers and processors.
Speaker 3: Currently, there are many voices reaching the public gear who
Speaker 3: make accusations against sugar as a food, such as that
Speaker 3: sugar is an important cause of coronary heart disease. Because
Speaker 3: of public concern, the Food and Drug Administration in recent
Speaker 3: years had a group of independent scientists review the world's
Speaker 3: literature dealing with sugar. The conclusion was reached that, other
Speaker 3: than one of the contributing factors tatoost decays, there is
Speaker 3: no evidence indicating that the average amount of sugar consumed
Speaker 3: by the American public in any way constitutes a health hazard.
Speaker 1: That's not a spokesman for the sugar industry speaking. That's
Speaker 1: the founder of the nutrition department at Harvard University School
Speaker 1: of Public Health. Kristen found that the International Sugar Research
Speaker 1: Foundation funded thirty studies in Stair's department between nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two and nineteen fifty six. He also led the report
Speaker 1: Sugar in the Diet of Mane. Let me just reiterate
Speaker 1: this is a Harvard professor working in public health, also
Speaker 1: being paid by the sugar industry, saying sugar is not harmful.
Speaker 3: In conclusion, sugar is an important part of the diet,
Speaker 3: is the source of energy, It's a safe food, it
Speaker 3: tastes good and makes other foods taste good. And remember
Speaker 3: that eating is one of the pleasures of life.
Speaker 1: Off the back of all this, the Sugar Association made
Speaker 1: ads for newspapers and magazines exclaiming sugar is safe. The
Speaker 1: ad said, quote, there is no substantiated scientific evidence indicating
Speaker 1: that sugar causes diabetes, heart disease, or any other malady
Speaker 1: end quote. So sit back, take a bite of your oreo,
Speaker 1: sip on your Coca Cola, and enjoy the blissful pleasures
Speaker 1: of corporate influence in America. The research, the literature reviews,
Speaker 1: the attacks on the opponents, the media campaigns, the success
Speaker 1: with the FDA report. All of this led to a
Speaker 1: big moment for the Sugar Association.
Speaker 2: The Silver Antel Award was really a big win for
Speaker 2: the Sugar Association. Is given out by the Public Relations
Speaker 2: Society of America, and it's like winning an oscar if
Speaker 2: you're in the public relations world.
Speaker 1: Christian uncovered an image of them accepting the award in
Speaker 1: the CPUs stained photo, three men smile clutching the trophy.
Speaker 1: They had faced a barrage of criticism and who won
Speaker 1: They did more. After the break. With the image of
Speaker 1: sugar as being safer than fat firmly embedded in the
Speaker 1: public imagination, the sugar companies were free to continue pushing
Speaker 1: the sweet stuff, and inevitably people ate more and more
Speaker 1: of it. Two hundred years ago, we ate an average
Speaker 1: of thirteen pounds of sugar a year. These days in
Speaker 1: the US that figure is more like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds. That means in a month's time we get
Speaker 1: through what we used to eat in a whole year. Now.
Speaker 1: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the
Speaker 1: United States. Every thirty six seconds someone dies from a
Speaker 1: cardiovascular condition, and about one in ten of us live
Speaker 1: with diabetes. A decisive link between sugar and these diseases
Speaker 1: is still debated, but what can be definitively said is
Speaker 1: that eating a lot of sugar increases the possibility of
Speaker 1: being overweight, which is a risk factor for type two diabetes,
Speaker 1: some cancers, and heart disease. Saturated fat certainly plays its
Speaker 1: role as well. This all might seem kind of distant
Speaker 1: literature reviews, FDA reports, nutrition studies, but it affects you
Speaker 1: and one of the most personal things in your life
Speaker 1: what you eat.
Speaker 2: Products that were high in sugar could be marketed as healthy.
Speaker 2: It was all about low fat.
Speaker 5: I have very little news this new best foods low
Speaker 5: fat mannaise dressing has.
Speaker 2: Very little fat, so if a product was low in
Speaker 2: fat but high in sugar, according to the US government,
Speaker 2: it could be marketed as a healthy product because there
Speaker 2: was no limit set on how much sugar was too much.
Speaker 1: The low fat market hit the accelerator.
Speaker 7: Nobody does fat free indulgence like SnackWells New SnackWells chocolate
Speaker 7: Truffle cookies, so good can we ever make enough?
Speaker 1: Even sugar itself could be marketed as a way to
Speaker 1: reduce your weight while you're.
Speaker 4: Holding down your weight only eighteen calories peteaspoon and domino
Speaker 4: and prcane sugar.
Speaker 1: There's a simple parallel to be drawn here to another
Speaker 1: industry that spent years trying to influence science and get
Speaker 1: the public hooked on its product.
Speaker 2: The sugar industry has some interesting connections to the tobacco industry,
Speaker 2: So first, they actually have some of the same players.
Speaker 2: One really interesting thing I found was that the first
Speaker 2: scientific director for the Sugar Research Foundation.
Speaker 1: That was the original name of the Sugar Association.
Speaker 2: Went on to work for the tobacco industry. He sent
Speaker 2: the tobacco companies a letter telling them about all the
Speaker 2: great work he had done for the sugar industry and
Speaker 2: exonerating sugar from being linked to obesity, heart disease, B
Speaker 2: vitamin problems to decay, and said that the problems of
Speaker 2: the cigarette companies were so similar to what the sugar
Speaker 2: industry had gone through that he thought he could be
Speaker 2: of great service to the tobacco companies, and indeed they
Speaker 2: hired him and he became the assistant scientific director of
Speaker 2: the Tobacco Industry Research Committee for at least a decade.
Speaker 2: The sugar industry might have been up to no good
Speaker 2: even before the tobacco industry, So in this case, it
Speaker 2: looks like the tobacco industry actually might have learned from
Speaker 2: what the sugar industry was doing.
Speaker 1: We asked the Sugar Association about these allegations that they
Speaker 1: funded research explicitly designed to exonerate sugar as a cause
Speaker 1: of chronic disease, that their funding of such research was concealed,
Speaker 1: and that the attacked opponents of sugar. They send us
Speaker 1: a statement which you can read in full in the
Speaker 1: episode notes, but in part, they told us the Sugar
Speaker 1: Association's past and ongoing support of nutrition research was and
Speaker 1: is undertaken in good faith in pursuit of science based
Speaker 1: nutrition knowledge and sound public policy decisions that result in
Speaker 1: better public health outcomes. While standards for peer reviewed published
Speaker 1: research and nutrition research of all kinds have changed over
Speaker 1: the decades, the sugar industry's financial support of past academic
Speaker 1: nutrition research discussed in your podcast should have been disclosed.
Speaker 1: They also added, it is important to recognize that despite
Speaker 1: decades of inquiry on the topic of sugar and health
Speaker 1: and tens of thousands of studies, scientific consensus still suggests
Speaker 1: that added sugars are not the cause of obesity or
Speaker 1: heart disease, best summed up by the FDA in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen when it wrote, US consensus reports do not support
Speaker 1: a cause and effect relationship between added sugar's consumption and
Speaker 1: the risk of obesity and heart disease. Listen, it's a
Speaker 1: long statement with a lot of words in it. It's
Speaker 1: clear the Sugar Association acknowledges that they weren't as transparent
Speaker 1: as they should have been, and that's an important point.
Speaker 1: I will only note that rising to the standard of
Speaker 1: cause and effect in any kind of public health issue
Speaker 1: is a very high bar. Indeed, Kristin has faced criticism
Speaker 1: for her work too. Some have even gone as far
Speaker 1: as calling her a conspiracy theorist. Kristen, an assistant professor
Speaker 1: at the University of California.
Speaker 2: It's interesting when people might think about me as a
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist. Maybe it actually was a conspiracy, you know,
Speaker 2: behind the scenes. It's something that we didn't know about before.
Speaker 2: As the material is uncovered, you can see exactly what
Speaker 2: the sugar industry has been up to. Sugar and tobacco
Speaker 2: are quite different. You don't ever want to smoke, but
Speaker 2: with sugar, you know there is some room for some
Speaker 2: sugar in your diet. But the question is how much
Speaker 2: is too much? And that's the question that the sugar
Speaker 2: industry hasn't wanted us to answer.
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. The industry hasn't let up, even
Speaker 1: in recent years on its efforts to keep us eating
Speaker 1: loads of sugar. Peka Pushka is known as the man
Speaker 1: who made Finland.
Speaker 7: Help.
Speaker 9: Can you see me? Can you hear me? Okay good.
Speaker 1: He's a medical doctor and he too saw the rise
Speaker 1: of heart disease in the twentieth century and knew something
Speaker 1: had to be done about it.
Speaker 9: In the early seventies, Finland had the highest mortality of
Speaker 9: heart disease in the world, and that led me to
Speaker 9: this field because it was quite a national emergency. We
Speaker 9: have to do something.
Speaker 1: Peca is a fan of international collaboration, a big fan.
Speaker 1: Some people wear shirts that are emblazoned with their favorite
Speaker 1: band or someplace they've been as a tourist. Peca he
Speaker 1: wears the official UN gift shop button down.
Speaker 5: I bought this.
Speaker 9: Ship some years ago at the US headquarters in New York.
Speaker 6: I like this.
Speaker 1: He literally wears his love for global cooperation on his sleeve.
Speaker 1: So Paca went on to have some major roles in
Speaker 1: international public health, including at the WHO, the World Health Organization.
Speaker 1: He was the Director for non Communicable Disease Prevention and
Speaker 1: Health Promotion. Basically, he was tasked with looking into health
Speaker 1: issues like heart disease for the Global Health Group. Back
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, he was getting ready to
Speaker 1: publish a report for the WHO.
Speaker 9: We wanted to have a very solid scientific report, so
Speaker 9: we appointed an expert group of something like thirty people
Speaker 9: expert from different countries.
Speaker 1: The scientists made a strong unanimous conclusion in the draft report.
Speaker 9: Because for health reasons, sugar intakes should not be more
Speaker 9: than ten percent of energy.
Speaker 1: This was not something the industry wanted to hear. In
Speaker 1: other words, they recommended that no more than ten percent
Speaker 1: of our calories should come from sugar.
Speaker 9: Then suddenly, quite suddenly, actually the sugar industry really started
Speaker 9: this very heavy attack and saying that it is not scientific,
Speaker 9: it should not be published.
Speaker 1: Pecka says that sugar lobbyists started content acting him.
Speaker 9: It was very strong pressure against publishing this report.
Speaker 1: And there's one memory that sticks.
Speaker 9: Out, one particular occasion that is still very strongly in
Speaker 9: my mind, when a very powerful, very important Coca Colar
Speaker 9: lobbyist came to my office and said, Becker, about this work,
Speaker 9: Are you sure you know what you are doing? Because
Speaker 9: you are now dealing with big boys par maturitical industry,
Speaker 9: small boys. Now you are messing up with the big boys.
Speaker 9: Are you sure you know what you are doing? He
Speaker 9: also said that if you act properly, we have millions
Speaker 9: the work with your people, meaning.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of money to spend to give
Speaker 1: to the WHO for joint projects. We asked Coca Cola
Speaker 1: to respond to the claim that they lobbied the WHO
Speaker 1: after this ten percent recommendation, but we got no reply back.
Speaker 1: When this was all happening, Peca refused to back down.
Speaker 1: He said there was solid evidence for the recommendation and
Speaker 1: the report would be published regardless of the pressure.
Speaker 9: We have to be patient and just push, push and push.
Speaker 1: His colleagues jokes that he puts the push in Peka, Pushka.
Speaker 9: Somebody said, okay, now we know why your name is Pushka.
Speaker 1: But the Big Sugar boys went a step further.
Speaker 2: The sugar industry launched a massive campaign to threaten the WHO,
Speaker 2: coming from the US saying that we would pull our
Speaker 2: funding from the WHO if they continued on with that recommendation,
Speaker 2: and the sugar industry was able to recruit to US
Speaker 2: senators as well as our Secretary of Health and Human
Speaker 2: Services at the time to write it was like a
Speaker 2: twenty six page letter claiming that the evidence the WHO
Speaker 2: had used did not meet the standards of the US government.
Speaker 1: The letter from the Sugar Association threatened the WA, saying
Speaker 1: they're demanding that Congress end its funding unless the WHO
Speaker 1: scrapped the guidelines.
Speaker 10: You know we did with the letter.
Speaker 9: We licked it to the Guardian.
Speaker 1: The Guardian published parts of the leaked letter, and the
Speaker 1: Big Sugar tactic backfired. Pekka thinks all the resistance from
Speaker 1: the lobbyists and politicians actually drew attention to the report
Speaker 1: and the ten percent recommendation.
Speaker 10: After all this well, being there was huge international interests
Speaker 10: in this report, the Senator should have realized how stupid
Speaker 10: it was of there, absolutely stupid.
Speaker 2: So the sugar industry has a lot of support to
Speaker 2: try to influence even international organizations to try to soften
Speaker 2: the message about sugar and chronic disease. That's pretty astounding
Speaker 2: their power.
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, a last note on the
Speaker 1: John Yudkin Ansel Keys feud. Keys certainly came out on
Speaker 1: top in the seventies, but perhaps not now, helped in
Speaker 1: part by something else Kristen found.
Speaker 2: I discovered a brochure on the Sugar Research Foundation just
Speaker 2: in this random publication online, and it was listing the
Speaker 2: first research projects that SRF funded in the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: and Ansel Keys happened to be the very first researcher
Speaker 2: that they gave money to. They gave him at the
Speaker 2: time about twelve thousand dollars per year for a three
Speaker 2: year project, which would be the equivalent of about one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars per year today. So that's pretty significant.
Speaker 6: Probably not on the explicit condition that he undermined John Jorkinsburg,
Speaker 6: but with a wink probably said well, you know, we're
Speaker 6: very interested in your work, and we noticed that your
Speaker 6: work has the effect of underlining John Yudkin, and we're
Speaker 6: happy to fund you.
Speaker 1: Hence the accusation that by helping attack Yudkin and not
Speaker 1: warning people about the potential impacts of sugar ansel keys
Speaker 1: has cost lives. That's what those YouTube comments were suggesting. Anyway,
Speaker 1: many would say that cozy relationships with industry are the
Speaker 1: norm and have no impact on a scientist's impartiality. These
Speaker 1: funds were granted back the nineteen forties, well before the
Speaker 1: feud was really underway. Yudkin also took funding from industry
Speaker 1: giants such as Hines, Nestley and the National Dairy Council,
Speaker 1: but his results, as he writes in the acknowledgments to
Speaker 1: Pure White and Deadly, were often not at all in
Speaker 1: their interests. Fortunately for Judkin, discoveries like Christen's, coupled with
Speaker 1: new research, began to turn the tide of opinion around
Speaker 1: his work, and actually, thanks to a viral video, the
Speaker 1: book Pure White and Deadly has gone gangbusters it's become
Speaker 1: a hit and been republished and translated into a bunch
Speaker 1: of languages forty years after its original publication, so.
Speaker 6: It's undergone something of a rebirth of that book.
Speaker 1: Michael is enjoying seeing how his dad's work has gone
Speaker 1: through a sort of renaissance.
Speaker 6: Of course, it's always nice to see one's own father
Speaker 6: welcomed again. So it was fun for me, and it
Speaker 6: is extraordinary. I don't know a case like it actually.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the World Health Organization did end
Speaker 1: up making that ten percent recommendation and now labels on
Speaker 1: food list a line for added sugar, while sugar consumption
Speaker 1: in the US has gone down since the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: With this turn of events these days, Michael imagines his
Speaker 1: dad's response.
Speaker 6: He was not the kind of man to say, I
Speaker 6: told you so. He was a man to say, oh, well,
Speaker 6: something good has happened. Let's rejoice.
Speaker 1: Kristen now feels like the case is closed on that question.
Speaker 1: She asked all those years ago at the conference, why
Speaker 1: is lipten brisk tea considered healthy? And this whole investigation
Speaker 1: has shifted the way she looks at the world.
Speaker 2: I'm very cynical. How to say that it's not just
Speaker 2: one or two industries. There are many out there who
Speaker 2: make products that are harmful, and they all engage in
Speaker 2: some form of public relations to try to cover up
Speaker 2: the connections, to try to delay regulation, to try and
Speaker 2: convince us that there's no problem.
Speaker 1: And from all this research and experience, she has advice
Speaker 1: for anyone taking on big sugar.
Speaker 2: People definitely don't realize how sophisticated the sugar industry is
Speaker 2: and the resources that they have at their disposal, and
Speaker 2: the lengths that they would go to to protect their industry.
Speaker 2: The sugar industry is always on guard looking for threats.
Speaker 2: They're always scanning for threats. They never stop.
Speaker 1: And that's what you'll hear next week, just how far
Speaker 1: the sugar industry will go.
Speaker 9: There's all kinds of corruption.
Speaker 10: There's a kind you can prosecute, and there's the kind
Speaker 10: that there are no penalties for.
Speaker 5: If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, and
Speaker 5: vote against them, you shouldn't.
Speaker 9: Be in this business.
Speaker 1: And how much power they have that they have a
Speaker 1: line directly to the Oval Office.
Speaker 5: If you can get the President of the United States
Speaker 5: on the phone while he is breaking up with his girlfriend,
Speaker 5: You've got a lot of clout.
Speaker 1: That's next time on Big Sugar. Big Sugar is produced
Speaker 1: by Imagine Audio, Weekday Fund Productions and Novel for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: The series is hosted by me Celeste Hedley. Big Sugar
Speaker 1: is produced by Jeff Eisenman at Weekday Fund Productions. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by Kara Welker, Nathan Kloke, and Marie Brenner.
Speaker 1: Story editor and executive producer is Joe Wheeler. The researcher
Speaker 1: is Nadia Metti. Production management from Scherie Houston, Frankie Taylor,
Speaker 1: and Charlotte Wolfe. Our fact checker is Sona Avakian. Field
Speaker 1: reporting by Amber Amortigee. Sound design and mixing by Eli Block,
Speaker 1: Naomi Clark and Daniel Kempsen. Original music composed by Troy
Speaker 1: McCubbin at Alloy Tracks. Additional music by Nicholas Alexander. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alec Wilkinson, author of the book Big Sugar,
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Black, director of the documentary H two Worker.
Speaker 1: Big Sugar is based on the Vanity Fair article in
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Big Sugar by Marie A.
Speaker 8: Brainner.