With all this talk about fake news and alternative facts, you might be lead to believe that this is a new phenomenon. While, admittedly, the recent assertions of alternative facts in place of actual dialog is disconcerting, the fact of the matter is that the art of developing and disseminating false narratives has been around a long, long time.

Take the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), a trade association for the sugar industry in the United States, for example. Fearing market share losses in the wake of a handful of papers linking sucrose to serum cholesterol levels (and ultimately chronic heart disease) back in the 1960s, the organization funded a research program specifically designed to discredit these links and instead point the finger directly at dietary fat consumption. Given that both theories existed at the time, a credible argument could have been made, at least to some capacity. However the way by which the SRF demonized particular dietary fats—which ultimately impacted both federal policy and public opinion– is suspect at best.

The SRF hired credible nutritionists, expressed desired conclusions, provided the articles deemed relevant for analysis and had access to early drafts to a report that would eventually be titled, “Dietary Fats, Carbohydrates and Atherosclerotic Disease.” The report attacked possible biases and inconsistencies in individual reports that correlated sugar consumption with chronic heart disease (CHD) while not addressing the greater trends that emerged across these studies, and concluded that the only step required to reduce the risk of CHD was the elimination of saturated fats from one’s diet. Additionally, when the report was released in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, the SRF’s participation and funding was omitted.

All this comes from a recent report by JAMA Internal Medicine that had access to SRF internal documents. It’s a pretty interesting read that sheds light on how an industry is capable of influencing federal policy decisions.