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A generation ago that industry was tobacco and its product was
cigarettes. Today it is the food and beverage industry and its product is
sugar-sugar that is being added to food and drink. Dr Aseem Malhotra, a 37-
year old London, England cardiologist is a leader in the anti-sugar campaign
in Europe. He charges that the food industry has borrowed the corporate
play book of the tobacco industry to fend off regulation. The only
difference, he says, is that while tobacco was avoidable, sugar is currently
almost unavoidable.
Its hard to find Europe-wide statistics but in the UK, for example, in
2014 alone the food and drinks industry spent 256 million GBP promoting
unhealthy foods-those high in sugar and/or fat. According to a recent report
of the American Union of Concerned Scientists, nearly $7 billion was spent in
the US on advertising products with added sugars in the same period. Of
this, about $1.7 billion was specifically earmarked to promote such products
to children.
Last year the World Health Organization [WHO] reaffirmed its previous
recommendation that ideally our intake of sugar-except that naturally
occurring in fruits and vegetables-should not exceed ten percent of total
energy intake. The WHO presented strong data linking the consumption of
sugar to rates of obesity and, as Type 2 diabetes is clearly linked to obesity,
then to this disease as well.
In the average diet, ten percent of total energy intake would work out
to about 12 teaspoons of sugar per day. A single 330ml can of soft drink
typically contains around ten teaspoons of added sugar. The average adult
consumption in Western Europe is 20 teaspoons per day-and the average for
children is even higher.
We have solid evidence that keeping intake of free sugars to the ten
percent limit reduces the risk of overweight, obesity and tooth decay, said
Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHOs Department of Nutrition for Health
and Development in the press release launching the report.
Marlene Schwartz, PhD, is the Director of the US-based Rudd Center for
Food Policy & Obesity a non-profit organization dedicated to finding
solutions through research and policy for childhood obesity, poor diet and
weight bias. She says what the EU Pledge is doing is not enough. The EU
Pledge guidelines dont go far enough. We would like to see it extend to
[children] age 14 and under.
Another area of food and drink advertising which Dr Malhotra strongly
opposes is the association of products with athletes, a tactic used by the
tobacco industry just over 50 years ago when both celebrities and athletes
were employed to endorse cigarettes. He questions allowing the Olympics to
be sponsored by Coca-Cola. The companys partnership with the Olympics
that began in 1928 has just been extended to 2020. Coca-Cola associates
their products with sport, suggesting it is okay to consume their drinks as
long as you exercise, he wrote recently in the British Journal of Sports
Medicine.
Let us bust the myth of physical inactivity and obesity. You cannot
outrun a bad diet.
Public health advocates say two approaches that worked to reduce smoking-
consumer education and taxation-are needed to combat over-consumption of
sugar.
Although there has been some success with taxation, the food and
beverages industries continue to lobby against consumer education-again,
just as the tobacco companies fought government attempts to place warning
messages about the dangers of smoking on cigarette packages.
Advocates for labeling spoke out in frustration. Peter Hollins, then chief
executive of the British Heart Foundation, said: The European parliament
should be ashamed of putting the interests of the food lobby ahead of the
health of the people they represent. Mella Frewen, director general of
FoodDrinkEurope (the food and beverage advocacy group, formerly called
The Confederation of Food and Drink Industries of the EEC) said existing
labelling requirements give sufficient information. Europes food and drink
manufacturers are [already] providing clear information on labels, listing
calories and key nutrients, including sugars, which enables consumers to
make informed choices.
While the debate about clearer labeling continues in the EU, most
recently the US Food and Drug Administration announced their new template
for nutrition labels. On May 20, the regulatory body added a line on its label
guidelines for added sugar to be placed below a line for total sugar. This
is specifically to allow consumers to distinguish between sugars that occur
naturally in foods and those that do not.
The evidence against sugar and its ill effects on our health continues to
mount as study after study is published. Dr Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional
biologist at the University of California, Davis, completed a five-year
investigation in 2015 linking high fructose corn syrup-a common sweetener
in the United States-to increased risk of heart attack and stroke.
People should realize that there are no risks associated with reducing
sugar intake, says Dr Stanhope, but there are risk factors in continuing to
eat high amounts while waiting for more evidence. Parents should wean their
kids and themselves off daily sugar consumption and consider it a special
occasion food.
New research also indicates that sugar, like tobacco, may be addictive.
Eric Stice, a neuroscientist at the Oregon Research Institute, is using MRI
brain scans on adolescents that show that sugar activates the brain in a
way that is reminiscent of a drug like cocaine. He adds that people build up
a tolerance to sugar much the way smokers and drug users do. That means
the more sugar you eat, the less you feel the reward. The result, you eat
more than ever. Other studies point to sugar being addictive because it
activates the brains pleasure-generating circuitry.