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Miracle Berry & 'Big Sugar'

taras

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BBC News Magazine - The miracle berry by Adam Fowler
Imagine an extract from a berry that would make sour things taste sweet and help you lose weight. Then imagine not being allowed to take it.

The world is getting fatter. One billion people are overweight, and 300 million of those are clinically obese.

The search is always on for replacements for those things that, eaten in excess, make us obese - fatty and sugary foods. There is no miracle pill that can replace either. Nearly four decades ago one man came close to providing a tablet that could reduce our love of sugar. In the 1960s, Robert Harvey, a biomedical postgraduate student, encountered the miracle berry, an African fruit which turns sour tastes to sweet.



"You can eat a berry and then bite into a lemon," says Harvey. "It becomes not only sweeter, but it will be the best lemon you've tasted in your life."

More importantly, this "miracle" can be used to manufacture sweet tasting foods without sugar or sweeteners, which have always been plagued by an after-taste.

Spotting the potential health benefits, and the healthy profits, that the miracle berry promised, Harvey founded the Miralin Company to grow the berry in Jamaica and Puerto Rico, extract its active ingredient in laboratories in Hudson, Massachusetts, and market it across America. At first, Harvey aimed his products at diabetics.

"In market testing, diabetics thought our product, as the name implies, was a miracle."

But Harvey's sweet dream of making the world healthier came to an abrupt end. On the eve of the launch in 1974, the US Food and Drugs Administration unexpectedly turned against the product.



Legal advice and contact with the FDA had led Harvey to believe that the extract from the berry would be allowed under the classification "generally recognised as safe". Having been eaten for centuries in Africa, without anecdotal reports of problems, it could be assumed not to be harmful.

But the FDA decided it would be considered as an additive which required several years more testing. In the poor economic climate of 1974, this could not be funded and the company folded.

"I was in shock" says Harvey. "We were on very good terms with the FDA and enjoyed their full support. There was no sign of any problem. Without any opportunity to know what the concern was and who raised it, and to respond to it - they just banned the product. "

Harvey remembers a number of strange events leading up to the FDA's decision, beginning immediately after one particular market research test.

His investors, including Reynolds Metals, Barclays and Prudential, had put up big money. They were looking for big returns.

"From the beginning my interest was in the diabetic market but my backers wanted to put double zeros after the numbers we were projecting."

So, in the summer of 1974, miracle berry ice lollies, in four different flavours, were compared to similar, sugar-sweetened versions by schoolchildren in Boston. The berry won every time.

Don Emery, then vice president of the Miralin company, recalls the excitement.

"If we had got beyond the diabetic market we could have been a multi-billion dollar company. We'd have displaced maybe millions of tons of sugar and lots of artificial sweeteners as well."

A few weeks later, things turned sour. A car was spotted driving back and forwards past Miralin's offices, slowing down as someone took photographs of the building. Then, late one night, Harvey was followed as he drove home.

"I sped up, then he sped up. I pulled into this dirt access road and turned off my lights and the other car went past the end of the road at a very high speed. Clearly I was being monitored."

Sugar denial

Finally, at the end of that summer, Harvey and Emery arrived back at the office after dinner to find they were being burgled. The burglars escaped and were never found, but the main FDA file was left lying open on the floor.

A few weeks later the FDA, which had previously been very supportive, wrote to Miralin, effectively banning its product. No co-incidence, according to Don Emery.

"I honestly believe that we were done in by some industrial interest that did not want to see us survive because we were a threat. Somebody influenced somebody in the FDA to cause the regulatory action that was taken against us."

The Sugar Association, the trade body representing "Big Sugar" in the US declined to be interviewed on the subject but flatly denied that the industry had exerted any influence over the FDA.

The Calorie Control Council, which represents artificial sweetener manufacturers in the US, has failed to respond to questions on the issue.

The Food and Drugs Administration also refused to be interviewed and has indicated that a Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation request to look at the relevant FDA files will not be considered for a year. Robert Harvey had requested the same files over 30 years ago.

"We got back the most redacted information I've ever seen from FOI. Everything was blacked out. There would have been material in the file that would have embarrassed the FDA, I believe."

Faced with this silence, it's virtually impossible to assess what actually happened to prevent the miracle berry's progress to a sugar-free market.

But one thing is certain, it never got the chance to prove whether it really would have provided a miracle in our ever fattening world. And for Robert Harvey, that's the biggest shame of all.

"It was a big loss not only for my employees and shareholders but, even more importantly, for diabetics and other people with special dietary needs. It was tragic."

But all hope is not lost for the berry's champions.

Today a firm called BioResources International is trying to produce freeze-dried miracle berry at a plant in New Jersey. Dieters will watch the outcome closely.

MIRACLE BERRY
- Also known as "miracle fruit" or Synsepalum dulcificum
- Grown in Africa, first documented in 18th Century
- Acts on the sour receptors of the tongue, turning sour tastes sweet
- Effect lasts 30 mins - two hours
- Effect is destroyed in hot foods - eg coffee and baked foods
- Renders an accompanying dry white wine sickly sweet
 
The idea of the Sugar Conspiracy has some merit:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat

Camila Domonoske
Twitter


In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The article draws on internal documents to show that an industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to "refute" concerns about sugar's possible role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding.

The sugar-funded project in question was a literature review, examining a variety of studies and experiments. It suggested there were major problems with all the studies that implicated sugar, and concluded that cutting fat out of American diets was the best way to address coronary heart disease.

The authors of the new article say that for the past five decades, the sugar industry has been attempting to influence the scientific debate over the relative risks of sugar and fat.

"It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did, because review papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion," co-author Stanton Glantz told The New York Times.


In the article, published Monday, authors Glantz, Cristin Kearns and Laura Schmidt aren't trying make the case for a link between sugar and coronary heart disease. Their interest is in the process. They say the documents reveal the sugar industry attempting to influence scientific inquiry and debate.

The researchers note that they worked under some limitations — "We could not interview key actors involved in this historical episode because they have died," they write. Other organizations were also advocating concerns about fat, they note.

There's no evidence that the SRF directly edited the manuscript published by the Harvard scientists in 1967, but there is "circumstantial" evidence that the interests of the sugar lobby shaped the conclusions of the review, the researchers say.

For one thing, there's motivation and intent. In 1954, the researchers note, the president of the SRF gave a speech describing a great business opportunity.

If Americans could be persuaded to eat a lower-fat diet — for the sake of their health — they would need to replace that fat with something else. America's per capita sugar consumption could go up by a third.


But in the '60s, the SRF became aware of "flowing reports that sugar is a less desirable dietary source of calories than other carbohydrates," as John Hickson, SRF vice president and director of research, put it in one document.

He recommended that the industry fund its own studies — "Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors."

The next year, after several scientific articles were published suggesting a link between sucrose and coronary heart disease, the SRF approved the literature-review project. It wound up paying approximately $50,000 in today's dollars for the research.

One of the researchers was the chairman of Harvard's Public Health Nutrition Department — and an ad hoc member of SRF's board.

"A different standard" for different studies

Glantz, Kearns and Schmidt say many of the articles examined in the review were hand-selected by SRF, and it was implied that the sugar industry would expect them to be critiqued.

In a letter, SRF's Hickson said that the organization's "particular interest" was in evaluating studies focused on "carbohydrates in the form of sucrose."

"We are well aware," one of the scientists replied, "and will cover this as well as we can."

The project wound up taking longer than expected, because more and more studies were being released that suggested sugar might be linked to coronary heart disease. But it was finally published in 1967.

Hickson was certainly happy with the result: "Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind and we look forward to its appearance in print," he told one of the scientists.

The review minimized the significance of research that suggested sugar could play a role in coronary heart disease. In some cases the scientists alleged investigator incompetence or flawed methodology.

"It is always appropriate to question the validity of individual studies," Kearns told Bloomberg via email. But, she says, "the authors applied a different standard" to different studies — looking very critically at research that implicated sugar, and ignoring problems with studies that found dangers in fat.

Epidemiological studies of sugar consumption — which look at patterns of health and disease in the real world — were dismissed for having too many possible factors getting in the way. Experimental studies were dismissed for being too dissimilar to real life.

One study that found a health benefit when people ate less sugar and more vegetables was dismissed because that dietary change was not feasible.

Another study, in which rats were given a diet low in fat and high in sugar, was rejected because "such diets are rarely consumed by man."

The Harvard researchers then turned to studies that examined risks of fat — which included the same kind of epidemiological studies they had dismissed when it came to sugar.

Citing "few study characteristics and no quantitative results," as Kearns, Glantz and Schmidt put it, they concluded that cutting out fat was "no doubt" the best dietary intervention to prevent coronary heart disease.

Sugar lobby: "Transparency standards were not the norm"

In a statement, the Sugar Association — which evolved out of the SRF — said it is challenging to comment on events from so long ago.

"We acknowledge that the Sugar Research Foundation should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities, however, when the studies in question were published funding disclosures and transparency standards were not the norm they are today," the association said.

"Generally speaking, it is not only unfortunate but a disservice that industry-funded research is branded as tainted," the statement continues. "What is often missing from the dialogue is that industry-funded research has been informative in addressing key issues."

The documents in question are five decades old, but the larger issue is of the moment, as Marion Nestle notes in a commentary in the same issue of JAMA Internal Medicine:

"Is it really true that food companies deliberately set out to manipulate research in their favor? Yes, it is, and the practice continues. In 2015, the New York Times obtained emails revealing Coca-Cola's cozy relationships with sponsored researchers who were conducting studies aimed at minimizing the effects of sugary drinks on obesity. Even more recently, the Associated Press obtained emails showing how a candy trade association funded and influenced studies to show that children who eat sweets have healthier body weights than those who do not."

As for the article authors who dug into the documents around this funding, they offer two suggestions for the future.

"Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry-funded studies," they write.

They also call for new research into any ties between added sugars and coronary heart disease.
 
Science says that it happened but without malevolent intent:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq1618
The current controversy over sugar has its origins in the rise of obesity as a policy issue near the turn of the 21st century and concomitant concerns that existing dietary guidelines were not achieving their intended ends. As nutrition scientists increasingly acknowledged benefits of “healthy fats” and possible metabolic dangers of added sugars, critical new accounts questioned whether the architects of the low-fat campaign had placed too much faith in weak epidemiologic findings and brushed aside countervailing evidence. Some scientists particularly lamented the fate of John Yudkin, a British nutrition scientist from the 1960s who they noted had “preached in the wilderness” about the dangers of sugar, only to be sidelined and ignored (2). One article called this historical failure by low-fat enthusiasts to heed Yudkin's Cassandralike warnings “the sugar conspiracy” (3).


The case for industrial malfeasance builds on this revisionist foundation, expanding and enlarging the size and seriousness of the “sugar conspiracy.” In September 2016, researchers with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), announced that they had uncovered archival documents showing that in the mid-1960s, the sugar industry secretly paid nutrition scientists at Harvard to write a key literature review downplaying the evidence linking sugar and coronary heart disease (CHD) (4). As the UCSF authors recounted, “By the 1960s, 2 prominent physiologists were championing divergent causal hypotheses of CHD: John Yudkin identified added sugars as the primary agent, while Ancel Keys identified total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol.” But according to the authors, after the sugar industry “paid off” a Harvard review team led by D. Mark Hegsted, the effect was to “derail” scientific discussions of sugar's potential role in heart disease, with the dietary fat hypothesis subsequently coming to dominate the field.

Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor and authority on corporate influence, suggested that the documents were a “smoking gun” (5). The Harvard scientists “knew what the funder expected, and produced it,” she said, accepting a “bribe” that may have shaped the field for years. A New York Times report asserted that, “five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today's dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry.” Recently, a new study by the UCSF group claimed that the sugar industry “suppressed” damaging research it had funded.
We believe that these narratives are wrong. There was no “smoking gun.” There was no “sugar conspiracy”—at least not one which we have identified. Here, we offer a brief review of postwar nutrition research on fat and sugar and attempt to explain the emergence of these conspiratorial stories.
 
Nina Teicholz is a leading science journalist working against the current pro-carb folks in nutrition circles (like the FDA) who seem to be conspicuously pretending there is no work to show that high protein low carb diets work against type 2 diabetes better than a regimen of drugs.
https://ninateicholz.com/

I listened to her on the podcast Fitness Confidential with Vinnie Tortorich episode 2196, described thusly:

On this Friday's show, Vinnie Tortorich speaks to Nina Teicholz and they discuss her book "The Big Fat Suprise", her recent uncovering a blatant conflict of interest, where there are signs of hope, and more.
https://vinnietortorich.com/2022/09/conflict-interest-nina-teicholz-episode-2196

Vinnie welcomes Nina back to the show and they begin by reviewing what "Big Fat Surprise" is about. (1:55)

Vinnie mentions how people are seeing success with NSNG® and a low-carb lifestyle, and are mad that their doctors either didn't know the truth. (7:00)

They then discuss how there is a discussion between Congress and the FAA about adjusting planes to allow for larger people because it poses a safety hazard. (8:00)

Nina mentions how doctors aren't taught to think of your body systemically, but in parts; that is the fault of medical education which is influenced by Big Pharma. (13:45)

Only 7% of Americans are considered to be metabolically healthy! (13:40)

Nina explains details regarding a recent review of dietary guidelines, studies about low-carb results were entirely ignored! (19:20)

She talks about some of the varying conflict of interest as several of the people on the panel have interests in Big Food companies. Bias is built into the system. Vinnie asks Nina if there is any hope, and they chat about other areas where standards are slowing shifting to low-carb. (34:30)

Vinnie also asks about a chart Nina had address that listed breakfast cereals as healthier than an egg or meat! (40:55)

So many people have been given the wrong advice; however, certain companies and well-know doctors in the low-carb community seem to be gaining traction and are starting to be heard. (52:10)

I didn't write down the name, but the chart about breakfast cereals was the brainchild of one of the people working with the FDA on current guidelines. I didn't write down the name of the guy, but apparently he wrote an academic paper that was rejected by peer-review journals that said that sugary cereals like Lucky Charms were more healthy for breakfast than a boiled egg.

Her book Big Fat Surprise was well-reviewed in Lancet:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32095-0/fulltext
This is the quote that she has on her website from it, but as I can acces the whole article I can say that it is 100% positive:
"Gripping narrative…this is a disquieting book about scientific incompetence, evangelical ambition, and ruthless silencing of dissent that has shaped our lives for decades…researchers, clinicians, and health policy advisors should read this provocative book.”

Ancel Key's Seven Countries Study is mentioned in the Lancet review as the early work that "proved" fat intake/high saturated fat diet led to heart disease, but the experiment was rushed and subsequent data has shown the results are untrue.

It is still the standard:
https://www.sevencountriesstudy.com/about-the-study/investigators/ancel-keys/

Some researchers say that all the claims against Ancel are untrue:
https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SCS-White-Paper.THI_.8-1-17.pdf

Yet looking at this review from the American Journal of Clinical Nuturition (reprinted in fill at Teicholz's website) , it appears that the science behind Big Fat Surprise is legit too:
https://thebigfatsurprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/AJCN-Review.pdf
A quote from that review:
Teicholz reviews all of the literature (as opposed to only the
literature supporting one view or the other) on the diet-heart dis-
ease hypothesis and shows that the evidence in support of the hy-
pothesis is limited and overly reliant on epidemiologic associations
as opposed to clinical trials in support of a cause-and-effect rela-
tion. She also reviews how the stated “scientific consensus” on the
role of dietary fat and cholesterol in heart-disease risk was
achieved by excluding the skeptics from influential policy com-
mittees and, eventually, from funding opportunities. Nonbelievers
were considered to be too out of date and subsequently unable to
carry out studies that might validate or negate their skepticism.
Their questions and doubts were effectively negated by accusa-
tions of “industry funded spokespersons” and a lack of correct
thinking. Teicholz details one of the most regrettable aspects of
the recommended dietary changes when scientists, nongovern-
ment organizations, and the food industry promoted the shift from
expensive animal fats to inexpensive hydrogenated vegetable oils
and their injurious content of trans-fatty acids. Similar to the
“take out the fat and replace it with sugar” dietary shift, the
transition to hydrogenated vegetable oil was a significant dietary
conversion without any evidence of its benefit or safety
 
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