Sugar Industry Influenced Health Officials Over Tooth Decay Damage in the 1970s: STUDY

The sugar industry convinced US government scientists in the 1970s  to research ways of preventing cavities that did not involve eliminating sweets from the diet, a study shows.

According to a new research paper published in the journal PLOS Medicine, the sugar industry developed a strategy to deflect attention away from public health interventions aimed at reducing the consumption of sugar. That strategy included efforts like supporting research into a tooth decay vaccine.

The findings in the journal PLOS Medicine were based on 319 industry documents from the 1960s and 1970s that were stored in a public library collection at the University of Illinois.

The study found that instead of turning to an obvious solution-having people eat less sugar-the government was deeply influenced by industry interests that pushed alternative methods, such as ways to break up dental plaque and vaccines for fighting tooth decay, according to more than 300 internal industry documents, including old letters and meeting minutes.

"They were very interested in looking into ways to somehow re-engineer sugar so ... that it was less harmful to teeth," says study co-author Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy at UC San Francisco.

"But none of these research agendas panned out," Schmidt tells The Salt. And it wasn't just industry funding behind this research. Schmidt points out that taxpayer dollars supported it, too.

Representatives of the sugar industry then worked closely with the NIH, the main US government research body, on alternative research approaches.

"It was disappointing to learn that the policies we are debating today could have been addressed more than 40 years ago, " said author Cristin Kearns.