For decades the grocery store taught a simple villain: fat. A 2016 analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine showed the sugar industry funded 1960s research that downplayed sucrose and pushed fat and cholesterol as the dietary cause of heart disease. The low-fat cookies did not appear out of nowhere. They appeared after a scientific detour that was paid for.
This is not a conspiracy meme. It is correspondence, grant language, and a literature review in a major journal, reconstructed by Cristin Kearns, Laura Schmidt, and Stanton Glantz from Sugar Research Foundation documents.
Did the sugar industry fund heart disease research?
Yes. The Sugar Research Foundation, later the Sugar Association, launched a coronary heart disease project in 1965. Its first product was a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967. The review singled out fat and cholesterol and downplayed evidence that sucrose was also a risk factor. According to the JAMA Internal Medicine historical analysis, the foundation set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. Its funding and role were not disclosed.
The Harvard nutrition scientists involved were paid for the work. Reporting on the documents put the fee at $6,500 then, about $48,000 in 2016 dollars. The problem was not that literature reviews exist. The problem was the thumb on the scale. Epidemiologic, animal, and mechanistic studies linking sucrose to heart disease were treated as too weak to count, while cholesterol-lowering logic was allowed to carry the story.
Early warning signals about sugar and coronary disease had already shown up in the 1950s. The industry’s program in the 1960s and 1970s, the authors argue, helped cast doubt on sucrose while promoting fat as the culprit. If you grew up being told butter would kill you and a fat-free snack cake was a heart-healthy workaround, you lived inside that frame.
The Sugar Association has disputed how those old documents should be read, which is what trade groups do when archives surface. You can read the JAMA Internal Medicine paper and the 1967 New England Journal review yourself. Disclosure is the issue that does not go away. If the funder sets the question, picks the papers, and stays off the byline, the public got a product, not a referee. Treat any modern heart-health slogan the same way: follow the money, then follow the food. Bring skepticism to any campaign that needs a single villain to keep the rest of the cart looking innocent.
How did blaming fat change the American diet?
When fat became the enemy, food companies did what companies do: they removed fat and added sweetness, starch, and flavor systems so the product still sold. Shoppers got a halo around a cookie because the fat gram was smaller. Ultra-processed “low fat” food took market share that butter never needed.
Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States. That fact does not prove any one nutrient is the only driver. It does mean public advice should not be outsourced to whoever paid for the review. Modern work looks at added sugars, refined starch, and overall pattern, not just a cholesterol number. Industry-funded research is not automatically false. It is automatically interested. Policymaking committees, the JAMA authors wrote, should give less weight to food-industry-funded studies.
What should you eat after the sugar-versus-fat detour?
- Stop treating “low fat” as a health certificate. Read sugar and the ingredient list.
- Cook with olive oil, butter, or other fats you recognize. The panic was always too tidy.
- Keep added sugars for a deliberate dessert, not for the default sauce, yogurt, and cereal.
- Ask, of any heart-health claim, who paid for the study and what the comparison diet was.
You do not need to wage a holy war on fruit or on a pat of butter. You need to notice when a trade group writes the plot. Fat was never the only actor. Sugar bought itself a quieter role, and the aisles still perform the play.