This article traces the refined sugar industry’s post-World War II efforts to promote sugar as a necessary dietary component through an examination of its selective use of science and engagement with innovative documentary film making. It begins with the sugar industry’s efforts to promote sugar consumption in the early twentieth century, the period when nutrition science emerged and was popularized. It then moves on to analyze the evolving interplay of scientific knowledge and discursive practice in the sugar industry. The Sugar Research Foundation, Inc. (SRF), a group founded in 1943 by sugarcane and beet sugar business interests, provides the empirical case. The analysis focuses on the period from the SRF’s founding through World War II and its immediate aftermath. Evidence for the analysis was gathered from three archival collections. The article documents how the SRF developed “sponsored films” for mass audiences that employed scientists and scientific concepts to discursively construct refined sugar as a natural and necessary part of the American diet. The SRF combined state-of-the-art documentary film making and distribution with selectively chosen scientific findings to successfully defend its product against public health efforts to reduce consumption. The article makes the case that investigating the history of the refined sugar industry’s efforts to shape consumers’ food habits is an indispensable step toward understanding today’s challenge to address metabolic syndrome in public health.
