Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents.

Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review's objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF's funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry-funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.

Sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB): historical aspects of its use in beverages and a review of toxicity studies prior to 1988.

Sucrose acetate isobutyrate (SAIB), a mixture of esters of sucrose with a composition approximating the name sucrose diacetate hexaisobutyrate, has been used for over 30 yr in many countries as a 'weighting' or 'density-adjusting' agent in non-alcoholic carbonated and non-carbonated beverages. As part of the demonstration of safety of SAIB as a direct food additive in human diets, a program of toxicity testing was started in the late 1950s that culminated in extensive studies of SAIB in rodents, monkeys and humans over the last decade. This review summarizes the toxicity data, accrued up until 1988, that precede the safety studies published elsewhere in this issue. SAIB has been shown to have very low acute and chronic toxicities in rats, monkeys, and, except for effects on the liver, in dogs at feeding levels of up to 10% in the diet. Slight effects seen in rats and monkeys at levels of 10% in the diet are unlikely to be directly caused by exposure to SAIB. In dogs, however, SAIB causes decreases in bromosulfophthalein (BSP) and indocyanine green (ICG) elimination from the serum immediately following a single dose, indicative of interference with biliary excretion. On repeated feeding in dogs, SAIB caused increases in serum alkaline phosphatase levels, but enzymes indicative of toxic effects on the liver were unaffected. On prolonged feeding to dogs, SAIB caused changes in liver morphology revealed by electron microscopy. All of these effects were reversed when SAIB was withdrawn from the diet. The no-effect level for these effects in dogs was near 5 mg/kg body weight, but these effects were not seen in rats fed up to 4 g/kg body weight/day, monkeys fed up to 10 g/kg body weight/day, or humans fed up to 20 mg/kg body weight/day. The toxicity and pharmacological studies in dogs, rats and monkeys suggest that the effect of SAIB on biliary excretion and liver morphology in dogs is essentially pharmacological rather than toxicological in nature and that the difference between the effects in dogs at levels as low as 5 mg/kg body weight/day, and the lack of effects in rats or monkeys at levels up to 10 g/kg/day is not merely a quantitative difference between species, but an absolute qualitative difference.

An historical perspective on early progress of Queensland water fluoridation 1945-1954: sheep, climate and sugar.

BACKGROUND: Queensland's virtual rejection of artificial water fluoridation sets it apart from other Australian states, yet the early fluoride environs has been scantily recorded. METHODS: This paper used archives, literature review, personal interview and the traditional historic method. RESULTS: The connection between Queensland artesian bore water and caries resistance was postulated as early as 1912. Four decades later, two Queensland-specific factors influenced the planning to fluoridate community water supplies. The first (1945-1950) was confusion between the high levels of fluoride in artesian water supplying the pastoral industry and the scientific concept of artificial water fluoridation of communal supplies. The second (1952-1954) involved further scientific investigation involving water consumption patterns, occupational dehydration and fluid homeostasis within a sub-tropical climate. The role of the Australian Dental Association Queensland Branch (ADAQ) in early fluoride politics was minimal. Four early protagonists are identified--two dentists, an engineer and the sugar industry. CONCLUSIONS: Queensland had its advocates for artificial water fluoridation of communal supply as a means of caries prevention. Interest came from the dental, medical and engineering professions, and from the sugar industry. However, these efforts met with indifference based on confused extrapolation of the artesian experience (1945-1952) and hesitancy (1952-1954) due to contemporaneous concerns about human fluid homeostasis in Queensland's sub-tropical climate.

[Sugar's introduction in apothecary]. / L'introduction du sucre en pharmacie.

In ancient times, the medicaments used to be sweetened with honey. Subsequently, the Arab apothecaries progressively replaced it by sugar, as witnessed by their formularies, that were known as grabadins. These were introduced to the West as from the XIth century A.D. The latin world also produced its very own formularies, of which the Antidotarium magnum (circa 1100) and the Antidotarium Mesuae (appearing at around the same period) are the most famous. The latter accords to sugar a place of honour and has recourse to it for the best part of the formulae intended for internal usage (namely syrops, julebs, electuaries, loochs, aromatic powders, condita, conservae, etc.) whilst not abandoning the use of honey.

[Sugar's sold by apothecaries and grocers in Paris in XVII century]. / La vente du sucre par les apothicaires et les epiciers Parisiens au XVII siecle.

Until the XVIth century Paris apothecaries and grocers sold sugars but from the beginning of the XVIIth century the former leaved the sale to the latter initiating the separation of both trades officialized by a Declaration royale, in 1777.

[Beetroot sugar and the development of its industry; from the first works until the postwar period 1914-1918]. / Le sucre de betterave et l'essor de son industrie, des premiers travaux jusqu'a la fin de la guerre de 1914-1918.

The research on beetroot sugar began in Germany with Marggraf and Achard and gained in importance in France during the Continental Blocade, more directly with the work of Chaptal and Delessert. The industry born from this sugar, the only product which could favorable replace cane sugar from the West Indian colonies, was developed thanks to Napoleon I. The Emperor brought his support and large grants to the manufacturers who had launched themselves in the production of this sugar substitute. If Chaptal, a former minister who was certainly one of the most significant pioneers in this field, was a beetroot grower and sugar manufacturer on the grounds of Chanteloup near Amboise; numerous other industrialists established themselves in France in areas of beetroot cultivation which quickly occupied vast surfaces in certain regions. It is the history of beetroot sugar, its economic importance and the beetroot industry in France, from its origins until the end of the First World War, that we will present here.

[Grape sugar manufacture assays under Premier Empire]. / Essais de fabrication de sucre de raisin sous le Premier Empire.

The Continental Blockade was established by the Decree of Berlin (1806). Scientists, manufacturers, and politicians were interested in grape sugar as a substitute for cane sugar. Grape sugar had been extracted and refined by Proust (1754-1826), in Spain, on a laboratory scale. He was invited by the Government to search a way of producing grape sugar on an industrial scale. As a scientist, he accompanied manufacturers in their assays. The matter is closed about 1811. It throws light on aspects of scientist's relationship, and part of authorities in the birth and failure of an agricultural industry. It signs the transition from an economic system directed by the Government to a system managed by manufactuers. This story forcasts the partition between scientists and manufacturers which will increase in France during all the century. As his compatriot Volney, Proust was an ideologue, searching for basic, general laws and useful science.

The sugar industry, political authorities, and scientific institutions in the regulation of saccharin: Valencia (1888-1939).

In the late-nineteenth century food production and trade were greatly transformed. Changes in the food chain gave rise to new problems connected with food safety and food quality, which caused new controls to be introduced throughout Europe. In this paper I will contribute to ongoing debates by focusing on the regulation of saccharin in an agrarian city in the south of Europe, Valencia. The laboratory-made sweetener was introduced into the food market at the turn of the century, becoming highly controversial shortly afterwards. Several local groups of players got involved in this dispute. The sugar industry was not only an important stakeholder in the passing of some specific laws that were to constrain the use of saccharin, but also the main driver of regulation, primarily in periods when saccharin could become a serious competitor and reduce the sector's profit. Furthermore, the combined work of the sugar industry and the municipal laboratories was essential for the implementation of regulations. It was in such municipal laboratories that scientists played a main role in regulation. My paper will address the commercial disputes linked to the use of saccharin and the limited role of science and scientists in its control.