The Irish food and drink industry has reportedly rejected government proposals to impose a sugar tax on soft or “fizzy” drinks, calling the tax a “discriminatory” measure that “would have no health benefits and would further hit already hard-pressed Irish consumers.” Commenting on the issue, Food and Drink Industry Ireland (FDII) cited the “fat tax” initiative in Denmark that was reversed this week after authorities found it did not change consumer behavior but instead led to higher inflation and an increase in cross-border shopping. As FDII Director Paul Kelly explained, “Fiscal measures specifically aimed at altering behavior are complex to design and can be highly unpredictable. Ireland already imposes high taxes on many foods. While most foods are exempt from VAT, the standard rate of 23% applies to confectionery items like sweets, chocolate, crisps, ice-cream and soft drinks. An additional tax on sugar or soft drinks would leave Irish consumers…
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Danish lawmakers have killed a controversial “fat tax” one year after its implementation, finding that the tax’s negative effect on the economy and small businesses far outweighed any health benefits. According to news sources, nations such as Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have held up the tax, which applies to foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fat, as a potential model for addressing obesity and other health concerns. But in Denmark, the tax has become a source of pain for consumers, food producers and retailers as the nation’s economy struggles. The Danish tax ministry has evidently said that fat and sugar taxes have drawn criticism for increasing prices for consumers and companies alike, and putting Danish jobs at risk, as well as for encouraging Danes to travel across the border to buy cheaper foods. As the tax ministry thus stated, “The suggestions to tax foods for public health…
In a move that Mother Jones magazine calls “surreal,” The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) has issued a press release using the magazine’s recently published exposé “Big Sugar’s Sweet Lies” as a “cudgel” in CRA’s battle with the sugar industry. The exposé outlines the alleged decades-long efforts by the U.S. sugar industry to influence the debate about the health effects of sugar compared to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and CRA apparently believes it helps its case. In the article “Are High-Fructose Corn Syrup Makers in Denial?,”Mother Jones author Michael Mechanic writes, “The corn refiners should be sending flowers, not subpoenas, to the Sugar Association. After all, the association’s decades-long campaign to bury evidence suggesting that its product plays a role in the ‘death-dealing diseases’—as revealed in our story—has benefited the makers of HFCS as well. If the corn refiners imagine that our exposé somehow left them looking good, well, I’ve got some…
Following publication of an article titled “Sweet Little Lies,” Mother Jones magazine has made available online the documents underlying the authors’ assertions of sugar-industry influence over government dietary policy and scientific health effects research. Additional details about the article appear in Issue 459 of this Update. Among the documents is one from 1942 that purportedly “encouraged sugar cane and sugar beet producers to create a joint research foundation to counter the ‘ignorance’ the industry was facing.” It discusses World War II sugar rationing and campaigns “derogatory to sugar.” A video featuring one of the article’s authors is also available online. In a related development, writing in the Harvard College Global Health Review, Dylan Neel calls for strict regulation of sugar, including taxation, reduced availability, control of the location and density of retail markets, and tightened vending machine and snack bar licensing. He claims in his October 24, 2012, article “The…
Nutritionists and consumer groups have reportedly criticized the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for reducing its per capita sugar consumption estimate from approximately 100 pounds per year to 76.7 pounds per year. According to an October 26, 2012, New York Times article, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson “stumbled across” the agency’s latest assessment “while working on a project on sugar consumption.” Lowering the previous benchmark by 20 percent, the revised numbers apparently raised red flags with Jacobson, who suggested that the methodology used by USDA researchers was “built on a foundation of sand.” “The new estimate is still relying heavily on experts making what seem to me to be largely guesses,” he told Times reporter Stephanie Strom. “Other than the 4 percent they’re getting [from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey], what do they really know for certain?” In particular, Strom questioned…
Based on hundreds of internal industry documents, this article outlines the alleged decades-long effort by sugar-producing interests to influence the scientific debate about the purported health effects of sugar. According to the authors, the memos, letters and company board reports “show how Big Sugar used Big Tobacco-style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products.” The article claims that the industries’ goals were the same: “safeguard sales by creating a body of evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research.” As early as 1943, grower and refiners reportedly formed the Sugar Research Foundation to counter calls for sugar-rationing during World War II. Among other matters, the article claims that the industry purportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on research suggesting that low-calorie sweeteners caused disease in animals and redirected any research funds it was providing through its International Sugar Research Foundation (ISRF)…
NBC’s Open Channel blog has reported “an inexplicable epidemic in Central America, where more than 16,000 people—mostly sugarcane workers— have died from incurable chronic kidney disease [CKD].” According to Open Channel, “hundreds, if not thousands” of people in the sugar-producing city of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, have allegedly contracted CKD, which has apparently increased “five-fold in the last two decades” throughout the region and turned up in parts of India and Sri Lanka. Citing the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), NBC’s Kerry Sander and Lisa Riordan summarize the unique profile of CKD in sugarcane workers who do not exhibit the obesity, diabetes and hypertension often linked to the disease in developed countries like the United States. “It affects people who don’t have diabetes or hypertension, which are the usual risks factors for chronic kidney disease,” one CPI reporter told the blog. “No one can figure out what it is that’s making all…
A recent study has purportedly found “for the first time a link between excess dietary sugar and the accumulation of liver fat by DNL [de novo lipogenesis],” the process by which simple sugars like fructose or glucose are converted in the liver into SFA palmitate. Ksenia Sevastianova, et al., “Effect of short-term carbohydrate overfeeding and long-term weight loss on liver fat in overweight humans,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, October 2012. After placing 16 overweight subjects on a high-calorie diet for three weeks and then a low-calorie diet for six months, researchers reported that carbohydrate overfeeding induced an approximately 10-fold “greater relative change in liver fat (27%) than in body weight (2%),” with the increase in liver fat proportional to DNL. Based on these findings, the study’s authors concluded that “short-term overfeeding with simple carbohydrates markedly increases liver fat and stimulates DNL in overweight subjects.” They also noted that, although…
The American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics will sponsor a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, October 10-12, 2012, that will focus in part on food-related issues. The “Public Health law Conference 2012: Practical Approaches to Critical Challenges,” event will include concurrent sessions titled (i) “If Sugar Is Addictive, What Does It Mean for the Law?,” including panelist Ashley Gearhardt, who has written on this topic with the Rudd Center’s Kelly Brownell in Biological Psychiatry; (ii) “Hot Topics in Preemption—From Fast Food to Fire Sprinklers to Safety Nets,” including panelist Mark Pertschuk, who actively promoted nonsmokers’ rights from 1987-2007; and (iii) “Enhancing the Safety of What We Eat: FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act,” including panelist Bruce Clark, an attorney with the Marler Clark firm which focuses its practice on food-contamination lawsuits.
The journal PLoS Medicine has published two articles and an editorial in a “major new series” on “Big Food” in this week’s issue, and will publish five additional related articles over the next two weeks. The editorial notes that the articles, focusing on “the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power,” were selected under the guidance of guest editors Marion Nestle of New York University and David Stuckler of Cambridge University. Contending that Big Food has “an undeniably influential presence on the global health stage,” the editorial introduces the other articles and observes, “We decided not to provide a forum for the industry to offer a perspective on their role in global health, since this point of view has been covered many times before and fails to acknowledge their role in subverting the public health agenda,…
