Our Research Process

The SugarScience team has conducted an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on sugar and health, combing through thousands of research papers on the topic to ensure that our site represents the most current and accurate scientific knowledge in this field. That review revealed strong and growing scientific evidence of sugar's link to diabetes, heart disease and liver disease. There is less extensive research linking sugar to Alzheimer's disease and cancer, but the team determined that more research must be done in those areas. We will continue to monitor each of these areas and will post further research on this site as it becomes available. 

Multi-Step Review

The team follows a multi-step process of locating, reviewing and summarizing this research. Our medical librarian, Dr. Evans Whitaker, conducts comprehensive searches for information in PubMed, the largest database of biomedical research in the world. These searches yield thousands of research papers.

The remaining papers are sorted by health topic and summarized by members of our research team. These summaries form the basis for the content and materials on SugarScience. All materials are reviewed by members of the SugarScientist team, to ensure an accurate and complete representation of the science.

The resulting database includes relevant scientific articles, regardless of publication date, type, national origin, language, funding source, authorship or conclusion. All scientific sources are scrutinized for potential author bias or conflicts of interest,^1,2  so our SugarScientist team can take this into consideration in its summaries and evaluation of the evidence.

SugarScience will continue to reflect changes in our knowledge about sugar and health as scientific and medical knowledge advances and will update this site accordingly. We look forward to providing the most up-to-date, evidence-based resource related to sugar and health.

• ^[1]Lesser, L.I., Ebbeling, C.B., Goozner, M., Wypij, D., & Ludwig, D.S. (2007, January 9). Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles. PLOS Medicine . doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005. Retrieved from http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040005
• ^[2]Levine, J., Gussow, J.D., Hastings, D., & Eccher, A. (2003, April). Authors' Financial Relationships With the Food and Beverage Industry and Their Published Positions on the Fat Substitute Olestra. American Journal of Public Health , 93(4), 664-669. doi:10.2105/AJPH.93.4.664