HEALTH - 'How to Sweeten Profits' by Sugar Industry

A 'Greed File'

"How the sugar industry paid experts to downplay health risks" PBS NewsHour 9/13/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Researchers have discovered documents showing that the sugar industry paid researchers to downplay the health risks of sugar and play up the risks of saturated fat in the 1960s.  Gwen Ifill speaks with Marion Nestle of New York University about the revelations, the health impacts of consuming sugar and the complexities of studying nutrition.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now, how the sugar industry paid experts to downplay health risks.

Researchers have discovered documents showing the industry tried to influence scientific studies back in the 1960s.  Early studies had found a link between sugar and fat and heart disease, but it now appears that the sugar industry paid two Harvard professors to point the finger elsewhere.

At the time, it wasn't routine to disclose such conflicts.

Marion Nestle wrote an editorial about the latest research in “JAMA,” “The Journal of the American Medical Association.”  She's an author and professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University.

Welcome, Marion Nestle.

Let's start by a few…

MARION NESTLE, New York University:  Well, glad to be here.

GWEN IFILL:  Let's start with a few definitions.

What was the Sugar Research Foundation?

MARION NESTLE:  Well, this was a trade association for the growers of sugarcane and sugar beets.  It's now called the Sugar Association.  So it's a trade group.

Its job is to promote the sales of sugar and to lobby to make sure that nobody does anything regulatory to reduce the consumption of sugar.  It's a trade group.

GWEN IFILL:  So, yes.  So, when all the years when we were being told that fat and cholesterol were the prime culprits in obesity and early death and heart disease, it turns out that sugar also played a big role.

MARION NESTLE:  Well, it did.

If you look at the epidemiology, at the time, it was clear that both sugar and fat were risk factors for coronary artery disease.  But these investigators at Harvard who were paid by the Sugar Research Foundation kind of cherry-picked the data and minimized the problems with sugar and maximized the problems with saturated fat.  And that was exactly what the Sugar Association wanted them to do, as the documents show.

GWEN IFILL:  So, the goal here was to sway public opinion, in much the same way that the tobacco industry did?

MARION NESTLE:  Yes, it followed the playbook of the tobacco industry.

The number one playbook rule is, the first thing you do is you attack the science, you cast doubt on the science.  “Merchants of Doubt,” the book and the movie, explain all that.  And the Sugar Association was doing exactly that.

It was trying to get researchers to produce research that would minimize a role for sugar and shift the blame elsewhere.  And they were very frank about what they wanted, and the investigators agreed that was what they were going to do.  Pretty shocking.

SLEEP - How Much Do You Really Need?

"These hunter-gatherer tribes sleep less than you, and sleep better" PBS NewsHour 10/15/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  By studying the habits of three hunter-gatherer groups who live much the way humans have for thousands of years, a team of scientists is challenging conventional wisdom about how much sleep we need.  Hari Sreenivasan goes to UCLA to learn more about getting enough rest and to do something he's never done on assignment before: falling asleep while on the job.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  ..... just how much sleep do you really need?  There’s been plenty of concern, as people spend more time looking at their screens ever later into the night.

Previous research has shown that a lack of sleep is associated with a series of problems, ranging from lack of concentration to health effects like obesity and heart disease.

But a new study out today finds seven or eight hours a night may not be as essential as we think.

I went to California to learn more.

They are among the last hunter-gatherers in the world, the Hadza of Northern Tanzania, the San of Namibia’s Kalahari Desert, and in the Andean foothills of Bolivia the Chimane.

By studying the sleep habits of these three groups, who still live the way humans have for thousands of years, a team of scientists led by UCLA’s Jerry Siegel is challenging conventional wisdom about how much sleep we need.

JERRY SIEGEL, Director, UCLA Center for Sleep Research:  It’s absolutely incorrect to think that the more you sleep, the healthier you’re going to be.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  The study, reported today in the journal “Current Biology” says we in the industrialized world sleep as much as our ancestors did.

JERRY SIEGEL:  There’s been speculation that humans basically used to sleep when it got dark, which would mean they’d sleep 10, 11, even 12 hours.  But it turns out that’s not the case.  These groups sleep five, six, seven hours.  None of them average over eight hours of sleep.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Just like us, when the sun sets, these people do not go right to sleep.

JERRY SIEGEL:  There’s a thin yellow line here that indicates the light level, and you can see also that they remain awake.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  In fact, regardless of what time they go to bed, all three groups, on different parts of the planet, wake up exactly when one very specific thing happens.  And, no, it’s not the sunrise.

JERRY SIEGEL:  They’re sleeping as the temperature falls, and they seem to quite consistently wake up at the lowest point of temperature in the day.  So, when the temperature stops falling, that’s when they wake up.

There’s been a lot of emphasis on light and the effects of light, and there’s no question that light affects sleep.  But light may have been connected to sleep largely because of its connection to temperature.