Sugar Industry Shaped NIH Agenda On Dental Research 54
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people to cut back on sugary foods should not be part of a national plan to fight childhood tooth decay, a new study of historical documents argues.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.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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
Fourty Years Ago (Score:5, Funny)
We should be OUTRAGED!
If we can remember back that far.
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I remember (Score:3)
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.
Re:I remember (Score:4, Interesting)
As phrased it sounds like it wasn't the studies themselves that were discouraged, but their inclusion in national dental policies. Much easier that way - none of those pesky truth-seeking researchers involved at that level. It would hardly be the first time - just look at what the meat and grain lobbies did to the dietary recommendations in the food pyramid - very little grounding in what the research actually recommended there.
Re:Fourty Years Ago (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding! It's a good thing stuff like that doesn't happen anymore. And even if it does, we can all be completely apathetic about it in forty years.
Shhhh! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.)
Re:Shhhh! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Shhhh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
obviously the real story is how the sugar industry exposed the biased research the NIH was doing, and was simply working to preserve the scientists intregrity in the face of the research they were paid to find.
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So you're quoting an article from an unnamed newspaper that is certainly based on a press release from the sugar industry. Obviously a high quality source.
How long did the research last? Who did it? How much did it cost? The last one is the real kicker. What are the odds that the did just the minimal amount to pretend that they gave a crap?
Go watch some late night TV and look at all the products that are "c
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Re: (Score:1)
Forty.
When no one was looking, Lex Luthor took forty cakes. He took 40 cakes.
That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible.
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He then got forty cavities.
The definition of liberty (Score:2)
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.
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And choice when it comes to our sugar, and that Joey Naylor, that is the definition of liberty.
I wish business and government would not collude to deny me the right to choose what I want to buy, e.g., sugar subsidies [economics21.org], tobacco subsidies [ewg.org], ObamaCare subsidies [weeklystandard.com], etc.
Re: We should always be skepical. (Score:1)
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.
Drilled if you do, not drilled if you don't. (Score:1)
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?
Not so much (Score:2)
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
Re:Not so much (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, except, uh, brushing your teeth won't prevent lung cancer.
There is a sugar/cancer tie in though. The insulin spike from sugar consumption promotes tumor growth. Not that the sugar itself is carcinogenic, but the subsequent insulin flooding exacerbates the cancer. I've known people with advanced cancer whose doctors told them this, they wen't completely off carbs and tumor growth slowed significantly.
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Re:Not so much (Score:4, Informative)
From Mayo Clinic and other actual medical cancer studies:
Myth: People with cancer shouldn't eat sugar, since it can cause cancer to grow faster.
Fact: Sugar doesn't make cancer grow faster. All cells, including cancer cells, depend on blood sugar (glucose) for energy. But giving more sugar to cancer cells doesn't speed their growth. Likewise, depriving cancer cells of sugar doesn't slow their growth.
This misconception may be based in part on a misunderstanding of positron emission tomography (PET) scans, which use a small amount of radioactive tracer — typically a form of glucose. All tissues in your body absorb some of this tracer, but tissues that are using more energy — including cancer cells — absorb greater amounts. For this reason, some people have concluded that cancer cells grow faster on sugar. But this isn't true.
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It is completely accurate, simply dumbed down for people who don't know the complete chemical process of metabolizing and utilizing glucose.
To be absolutely clear, the scientific evidence is clear: NO, consuming less sugar/carbs/glucose does NOT impair tumor growth, NOR does consuming more speed it up. This is established and well known medical information that is only refuted by the likes of NaturalNews and other crank, pseudoscientific purveyors of misinformation.
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Which Parties Are Planning on Total Deregulation? (Score:1)
plaque causes dental caries (aka cavities) (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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)...
In Florida... (Score:2)
...you're not even allowed to talk about tooth decay.
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"...you're not even allowed to talk about tooth decay."
Because they're all so old they don't have any teeth. Not that they would hear you anyway.
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They all use toothpaste.
No, I do not use toothpaste, but my teeth defiantly continue to develop dental cavities.
Next baseless assertion?
What a surprise! (Score:1)
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.
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The people that run big corporations are bound by law to maximize the profits of their shareholders. Your subject line says it all. It should come as no surprise that they put profit above all else. What makes you think they give a damn or should give a damn about the "needs and rights of everyone else"?
By contrast, the government is NOT bound by law to serve corporations. They're supposed to be serving the public. So, who are the bad guys here? The people that are doing exactly what we should expect
Federal government = Worse than useless (Score:2)
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 jeop