The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Nonprofit

The Sugar Association

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • AGR-2.4: Kearns, Schmidt and Glantz state that there is no direct evidence that the sugar industry wrote or changed the manuscript of the 1967 review and that the evidence the industry shaped its conclusions is circumstantial.
  • AGR-2.5: In September 2016 the Sugar Association acknowledged that the Sugar Research Foundation “should have exercised greater transparency in all of its research activities” and said funding-disclosure standards were not then the norm they are today.
  • AGR-2.9: The 2003 WHO/FAO report on diet and chronic disease set a population goal of under 10 percent of energy from free sugars and described that goal as controversial. In March and April 2003, according to AP, CSPI and the Guardian, the Sugar Association's president wrote to WHO that the association would ask Congress to challenge U.S. funding, a food-industry coalition asked HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to intervene on 20 March, and Senators Larry Craig (R-ID) and John Breaux (D-LA) made a further request to Thompson on 28 March. AP also reports that the senators wrote Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.
  • AGR-2.15: The documents do not establish whether the Sugar Research Foundation's funding changed the conclusions of the 1967 review.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 587 12 September 2016. STAT (Melissa Bailey): Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research
  • Exhibit 588 13 September 2016. NPR The Two-Way: 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat
  • Exhibit 593 23 April 2003. Associated Press, via CBS News: Sugar Lobbyists Sour On Study
  • Exhibit 594 21 April 2003. Center for Science in the Public Interest: Big sugar's "thuggish" tactics come under fire
  • Exhibit 595 2003. Sarah Boseley (reprint of Guardian report of 21 April 2003), International Journal of Health Services 33(4):831-833: Political context of the World Health Organization: sugar industry threatens to scupper the WHO
  • Exhibit 607 19 September 2016. Katherine Rich, FoodNavigator: Sugar review: Rewriting history to expose a non-existent conspiracy