Medical ethics of the sugar industry
If we have said it once, we've said it a thousand times. Look at sugar!
Recently, a big revelation about sugar's role in our nation's health came out thanks to a concerning discovery made by Stanton Glantz, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
Glantz found historical documents that show how the sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960's to minimize the correlation between sugar and heart disease. Instead, scientists were corrupted to draw attention to fat to intentionally down play sugar's role in health.
Hammer has been talking about the dangers of simple sugars for almost 30 years. We have been championing a low-sugar diet and telling our athletes to avoid simple sugar fuels for decades before information like this was making headlines. We are almost not shocked by the conspiracy. We hope this further demonstrates the importance of Hammer's position on reducing or eliminating sugar from one's diet for optimal health. Our pioneering stance is something we are very proud of.
Glantz's research showed how a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation (now called the Sugar Association) was behind efforts to alter medical reality. The documents show that in 1964, John Hickson, a top sugar industry executive, discussed a plan with others in the industry to shift public opinion by releasing the "research" and influencing legislation. The group would end up paying Harvard scientists to yield biased studies to be promoted by the sugar group and accepted by the medical establishment. The intention was to set a precedent of looking away from sugar and towards saturated fat as a culprit for health ailments instead.
One of the scientists paid by the sugar industry was D. Mark Hegsted. He went on to become the head of nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1977, he helped draft the forerunner to the federal government's dietary guidelines. Another was Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, the chairman of Harvard's nutrition department. You can see how such bias has affected our nation's health paradigm and unfortunately, why Hammer's sugar stance was so unique and outside the mainstream.
Americans reportedly eat more than 150 pounds of sugar per year on average and athletes who consume sugary products in training can easily double this number. It is our conclusion that sugar is a leading contributor to all of the epidemic diseases we face as a nation and we are committed to providing information and nutritional tools to the public to counter this.
Here at Hammer Nutrition, we look to science and truth to structure our nutritional products and life-style suggestions. We have always advocated reducing or eliminating simple sugars. Unlike many widely available sports energy products, Hammer Nutrition fuels, including Hammer Gel, HEED, Perpetuem, and Sustained Energy, contain no refined simple sugars - only healthy complex carbohydrates and natural sweeteners such as stevia and xylitol. Thank you for trusting us as a source of information for the last 30 years. We look forward to leading the pack towards health and wellness into the decades to come.
Glantz's findings were published in the September 2016 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine and made public by the New York Times.
