In 1967, the sugar industry quietly paid three prominent Harvard scientists the modern equivalent of $50,000 to write a review that minimized sugar’s link to heart disease and instead pinned the blame on saturated fat and cholesterol.
The Sugar Research Foundation — today known as the Sugar Association — commissioned the work from Dr. Frederick J. Stare, then chairman of Harvard’s nutrition department, Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, and Dr. Robert B. McGandy. Their two-part review appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine without any disclosure of industry funding. It dismissed emerging evidence against sugar while declaring there was “no doubt” that cutting saturated fat was the key to preventing heart disease.
That single paper helped reshape official nutrition policy for a generation. In 1977, Dr. Hegsted co-authored the landmark Senate “Dietary Goals for the United States” report under Sen. George McGovern, which urged Americans to slash fat consumption and load up on carbohydrates. Those recommendations directly shaped the first federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980 and the famous USDA Food Pyramid unveiled in 1992 — the one that placed breads, cereals, rice and pasta at the wide base as the foundation of a “healthy” diet.
The flawed science crossed the border. Following a 1977 report to Health Canada on diet and cardiovascular disease, the 1982 Canada’s Food Guide introduced a “moderation” message urging Canadians to limit total and saturated fat while promoting grain products as the foundation of daily eating. The Canadian Medical Association and many cardiologists reinforced low-fat, high-fibre approaches consistent with prevailing guidelines.
The Canadian Diabetes Association (now Diabetes Canada) followed suit. In the 1970s it moved away from earlier carbohydrate-restrictive diets for diabetics toward limiting fat intake and increasing complex carbohydrates and dietary fibre. Its influential 1998 Clinical Practice Guidelines emphasized reduced saturated fat (<10% of calories), increased complex carbohydrates and fibre, and nutritional advice aligned with general population guidelines.
A highly cited 2016 historical analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine — the peer-reviewed journal that exposed the sugar industry’s payments — concluded that the funded research successfully cast doubt on sugar’s hazards while promoting fat as the main culprit in coronary heart disease. The authors noted: “Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD.” This influenced policymaking, including guidelines that emphasized reducing saturated fat, contributing to misguided low-fat, high-carb advice adopted in the U.S. and echoed by Canadian health organizations and diabetes associations.
Doctors in both countries passed the message to patients: cut butter, choose margarine, pick “low-fat” or “fat-free” yogurt and snacks, and fill your plate with pasta, bread and cereal. Millions followed the advice, believing they were protecting their hearts. Instead, the low-fat push fueled an explosion in processed foods packed with added sugars to improve taste. Obesity and Type 2 diabetes rates began their steep climb on both sides of the border.
The payments remained hidden until 2016, when researchers at the University of California, San Francisco unearthed internal industry documents for that JAMA study.
The New York Times reported at the time: “The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead.”
NPR summed it up bluntly: “50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat.”
The same major sugar producers and their biggest customers — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Kraft Heinz — have long maintained deep financial ties to the very medical groups that treat the epidemics they helped create. Between 2011 and 2015 alone, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo sponsored at least 96 U.S. health organizations, including the American Diabetes Association, according to a Boston University study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. PepsiCo has historically appeared in Diabetes Canada sponsorship and impact reports, while these groups have also partnered extensively with pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly — the makers of billion-dollar GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro) used to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
One undisclosed payment. Decades of misguided “scientific” advice. A self-reinforcing cycle of disease and profitable treatment. And millions of patients who followed it — right into the obesity and diabetes epidemics.
