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Sugar Industry Shaped NIH Agenda On Dental Research
sciencehabit writes: The sugar industry convinced the U.S. National Institutes of Health that studies that might persuade people to cut back on sugary foods should not be part of a national plan to fight childhood tooth decay, a new study of historical documents argues. The authors say the industry's activities, which occurred more than 40 years ago, are reminiscent of the tobacco companies' efforts to minimize the risks of smoking.
We should be OUTRAGED!
If we can remember back that far.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Post-WW2 (military industrial) ordinance makers need a product to keep them in business at wartime levels, therefore convert to making ammonia fertilizer. This fertilizer makes it possible to grow a lot more corn, especially corn soaked in Roundup. Corn also happens to be the major product of a number of early-primary states, which can't help but appreciate all of the subsidy dollars that they receive.
The Military Complex run Government subsidizes corn that buys votes and is turned into addictive metabolic poison to keep the populace fat, dumb and unhealthy. Much easier to govern the sheeple when they can't run.
Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our sugar, and that Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong.
Yes, all those West Germans trying to break into the proletariat paradise... The citizens of East Berlin were lucky they had that wall to keep the impoverished, manipulated Westerners out.
Also, about the evils of capitalism.. I misplaced my child.. I was giving him a bath, and after I threw out the bath water, he just vanished.. any ideas?
Is "was the decision /with/ the influence scientifically unsound?" If not, then it doesn't matter. Bring actual PROOF of a problem and not just accusations, please.
oh yeah...sorry the individuals won't get a penny from it, but at least we keep the lawyers rich
I would expect to hear about bull shit line this on NPR (not that I listen to NPR). Why is this on Slashdot? Slow tech news day?
I blame a democracy that believes politicians should be responsible for the economy.
Politicians don't care if kids' teeth fall out as long as they can go on about how many sugar jobs they created to get re-elected.
And the first Iraq war might not have happened if the public didn't expect Bush Sr to do something about a recession created by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.
We actually killed people in an effort to reduce the unemployment rate and stabilize oil markets, all because the public thought the president was responsible for the recession and was responsible for fixing it.
And yet other studies show thinner people prefer sweeter concoctions and fatter people less sweet, greasier ones.
They were probably promoting longevity at the cost of a few cavities. Anyone ever study cavities vs. obesity?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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irony:
$AC_CAPTCHA : "sinister"
We should be OUTRAGED!
What is also outrageous is the unwritten assumption that the general public didn't know sugar contributed to tooth decay. Like it was some big secret and the world had no idea. Or the notion that sugar consumption would not continue regardless.
Meanwhile, those evil sugar companies were doing stuff like this;
For example, sugar and food companies funded research on a vaccine to prevent tooth decay, and on adding an enzyme to foods to break up dental plaque. (A 1968 newspaper article headlined: “These monkeys may save your teeth” described a monkey lab that was studying the idea of mixing the enzyme with raw sugar.)
the industry's activities, which occurred more than 40 years ago, are reminiscent of the tobacco companies' efforts to minimize the risks of smoking.
Yeah, except, uh, brushing your teeth won't prevent lung cancer. We know how to combat sugar -- don't eat candy that's going to stick to teeth and remain there for prolonged periods, drink/rinse with water after eating it, and brush regularly. It's simple enough that most people can handle it, and people aren't exactly dropping dead from cavities anyway. So reminiscent maybe, but not really the same thing at all.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Remind me again which parties have deregulation as their selling point?
I was involved in doing dental research on NIH grants starting in 1976 (39 years ago). There was absolutely no indication that we should not persue the effect of sugar on dental health. OTOH, I did see the tobacco industry funding reseach trying to disprove that smoking stunts your growth.
There was a major change in the leadership of the National Insitute of Dental Research about 40 years ago so maybe it got cleaned up.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Although some sugars are worse than others (e.g,. hard candy which sticks to your teeth), just about any carbohydrate you might eat will contribute to plaque (including fruit, vegetables and even whole grains) and indirectly to increased susceptibility to dental caries (how hard your dental enamel is and how acidic your diet is are other contributing factors)...
You can vilify "refined" sugar and HFCS industries all you want, but equivalent sweetness of organic molasses or maple syrup are probably worse when it comes to plaque contribution to dental caries...
FWIW, the existing types of studies that target limiting sugar are not correlation studies, basically they are ecological survey studies on population statistics by estimating their sugar intake vs prevalence of cavities at certain points of time. The author was suggesting specific studies that try to address correlation between certain foods and cavities were being suppressed by the sugar industry.
But back in that time frame of the 60's and 70's people were looking for a vaccine for plaque so interest in such studies may have simply dissipated w/o needing a big conspiracy. This is probably due into a large part of seminal studies on dental caries (in the late part of the 19th century by Miller) that established the link between enamel decay and acids produced by plaque bacteria fed by potato starches (not sugar because it wasn't a wide part of the diet) and later studies in the 1940/50's (by Gustafsson) seemed to indicate the frequency of use of sugars (rather than the quantity of sugars consumed). By the 1960's/70's there were already studies (like Duggal) that implicated snacks like cakes and biscuits (that combined glutinous starch with sugar) which were consumed at higher frequency (more than 3 times per day or basically outside of mealtime) had serious "cariogenic" potential.
Unsurprisingly, this research wasn't suppressed, but basically ignored by the government panels. Sadly, back in the '70's, it was much easier to pay off people to simply ignore research, than to actually suppress the funding to start research (not knowing the outcome).
On the other hand, some of the unrepeatable history of dental research sponsored by the sugar industry, such as the one in Vipeholm, Sweden already yielded habits like lördagsgodis. I'm sure the sugar-industrial complex in the US would love for something like that to pop up in the US (and not just restricted to Halloween)...
Sugar, Lead in gasoline, Asbestos
What is it going to be 40 years from now? Vaccines? Aspartame? Fluor in water?
Why do people insist we should believe in "settled science" when its obvious big interests put big money on getting the results they want? Anything else is conspiracy theorist delusion obviously!
Neither.
...you're not even allowed to talk about tooth decay.
Or you look at the history of mercury and understand that certain combinations of mercury and other things are dangerous in a single drop.
However, you could drink liquid mercury and be pretty safe as iit is not readily absorbed through the digestive tract.
Stop fear mongering unless you have some data. Everything I've stayed above is trivially easy to confirm.
Desert stom didn't last long enough to cause a recession.
They all use toothpaste.
At any attempt of business meddling with research that meets good science levels of truth.
Wait another few years for the outrage over pesticides, gmo, & other bad products.
This includes tech products, Microsoft, Apple, & Oracle.
Other companies to add to the list
The people who own big companies lie and try to distort science because they place their own profit above the basic needs and rights of everyone else. We saw it with lead, we saw it with sugar (and we're still seeing it a bit with the pushback about high fructose corn syrup), we saw it with tobacco, and we're seeing it now with global warming.
Communism is hell for "equality". It has been tried and it is far worse than capitalism in almost every way.
I constantly hear the refrain that we need the federal government and federal regulators to protect us from the evil corporations.
From what I see, we're paying federal employees to either do nothing (SEC, OTS, CFTC, etc.) or to actively undermine our best interests (BLM, NSA, DofA, FDA, etc.)
A considerable fraction of federal regulators, especially the financial regulators, either came from or will go to the very companies they are supposed to be regulating! They refuse to enforce the laws for fear of jeopardizing their future employment prospects on Wall St.
We might as well fire them all as pay them for doing worse than nothing.
So, what happened? Did our teeth all rot away? No. We became fat. I'm sure the sugar industry wouldn't have wanted that revealed, either, but by suppressing dental policy implications, we got something arguably even worse.