Many people thought sugar was harmful, the sugar industry wanted to turn public opinion toward thinking sugar was safe so they forged public opinion on how the public viewed the effects of sugar," she said.Īs Couzens sorted through the documents, the full extent of that campaign to forge public opinion emerged.
"At the time the award was given in 1976, there was a controversy. "It's a little bit shocking to me that an industry would be rewarded for manipulating scientific evidence," Couzens said. In the 1976 photo, the president of the Sugar Association and its director of public relations smile as they pose with their prize for their successful campaign "forging public opinion," in the face of mounting consumer and government concern over the health risks of sugar. "That was a picture of sugar industry executives being awarded the Silver Anvil, which is like the Oscars of the PR world," Couzens said. When the Great West Sugar Company went out of business in the 1980s, someone put the files in a box so that librarians would know who the men were and why they were being honored. The documents survived in the Colorado University Library Archives only because they helped explain a photograph of three men and a trophy. "So I had lists of their board reports, their financial statements, I had names of their scientific consultants, I had a list of research projects they funded, and I had these memos where they were describing how their PR men should handle conflict of interest questions from the press," she said. What Couzens found was something food industry critics have been seeking for years - documents suggesting that the sugar industry used Big Tobacco tactics to deflect growing concern over the health effects of sugar. So the first document I saw was a confidential Sugar Association memo talking about their PR strategies in the 70s." And the word "confidential" was right under the letterhead. "It was on the Sugar Association letterhead which is the trade association in Washington for cane and beet sugar producers. "The first folder that I opened jumped right out at me," she said. Then one day she found what she was looking for, in a cardboard box at the Colorado State University archives. She quit her job, exhausted her savings and spent 15 months scouring library archives. "I was so shocked by that statement," she said, "I felt obligated to do a little bit of research, thinking perhaps the sugar industry had somehow had an influence over the lack of advice to limit sugar intake to prevent and control diabetes. Cristin Couzens publicized secret documents in a magazine article titled Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies.