obsidiae2ad2…lrg5rgvad.onion · read-onlyVault status: open unseal the Archive
THE OBSIDIAN REGISTRY

CASE RECORD · REAL HISTORY · ALL RECORDS

How the Sugar Industry Paid Harvard Scientists to Blame Fat

A 1967 review, a $6,500 payment, and internal documents uncovered in 2016.

Quick answer

Did the sugar industry pay scientists to blame fat?

Yes. Internal documents published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016 showed that in 1965 the Sugar Research Foundation paid three Harvard nutrition scientists to write a review of research on diet and heart disease. The review, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, played down evidence linking sugar to heart disease and pointed to dietary fat instead. The funding was not disclosed.

Timeline

  1. 1965The Sugar Research Foundation commissions a literature review from Harvard researchers, paying about $6,500 at the time.
  2. 1967The two-part review appears in the New England Journal of Medicine without disclosing the industry funding.
  3. 1970s to 1990sDietary advice in the US focuses heavily on reducing fat.
  4. September 2016Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco publish the internal documents in JAMA Internal Medicine.

What is documented, and what is not

On the record

  • The funding and the industry's role in setting the review's goals are documented in its own correspondence.
  • The 1967 review did not disclose the funding.

Disputed or unproven

  • How much this single review shaped decades of dietary policy is debated. Many other studies also influenced the focus on fat.

Common questions

Who were the Harvard scientists?

D. Mark Hegsted, Robert McGandy and Fredrick Stare, authors of the 1967 New England Journal of Medicine review.

How was the sugar funding discovered?

Researcher Cristin Kearns found the industry's internal documents in archives. They were published with colleagues in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016.

Do journals require funding disclosure now?

Yes. Major medical journals have required authors to disclose funding and conflicts of interest since the 1980s and 1990s.

Read the record yourself

Links go to official archives, museums, agencies and published research. Search links open the archive's own search for this topic.

THE FICTION BUILT ON THIS RECORD · FILE 032 · VOLUME VThe Sugar Industry Paid Harvard to Blame Fat. The Checks Never Stopped.Every study has a funding line. Almost nobody reads it.Read the first pages free →

Last reviewed 2026-10-13. This page covers the public record only. Archive files are dramatized and always marked as files.

Signal

Get the next file before everyone else.

New files drop without warning. Leave an address and we'll tell you first. We email rarely. Suspiciously rarely.