How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU [pdf](corporateeurope.org) |
How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU [pdf](corporateeurope.org) |
The article starts off with the premise that we are currently suffering a health crisis. This is insane. It's an extreme, hyper-negative point of view. We live in the safest times in all of human history. If you're not living in a shanty town without running water and suffering from dysentery, you're doing pretty well. If your sitting in your climate-controlled house in suburbia, sipping your soda thinking "Man, I'm killing myself with this sugary drink", you are choosing to be miserable. You have decided not to enjoy the wonderful world in which we live. You have decided to focus on an oblique health threat that starving humans through out history have dreamed about. Exporting that self-imposed misery to others is impolite at best if not pure evil.
With this kind of hyper-negative thinking, we could advance medicine to the point that we become immortal with eternally youthful regenerating bodies, but we would go hunting for a way for french fries and sodas to still be evil somehow. Like these things are some sort of modern day werewolf.
The premise is laughable at best. Dangerous at worst. It's neither sane nor healthy to think like this.
You mention civil war. The war here would boil down to the noble cause of killing people to protect us from the health threats of sugar. That's insane! We must reject this thinking.
>The dispute centered on Mexico's adoption of a 20 percent tax on the use of high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks, Mayer Brown said. The financial impact was significant because Mexico is the world's second-largest market for soft drinks.
>The tax illegally favored Mexico's domestic sugar producers over U.S.-owned producers of high-fructose corn syrup, the firm said.
It doesn't seem totally unreasonable. One of the principles of trade deals is there is a level playing field rather than passing laws to advantage the locals. http://www.law360.com/articles/123636/cargill-wins-77m-from-...
It does unlevel the playing field, but the tilt is on the sugar/HFCS axis, not the US/Mexico axis. I don't see why that should not be allowed, unless it can be shown that the US has more HFCS producers and Mexico more sugar producers so that it will disproportionately favor Mexicans AND it was enacted to accomplish that rather for some geographically neutral purpose.
The impacts of trade are complex and I don't think we need to run headlong towards laws favoring large corporations, but it's a little over the top to say that it is obvious evil to agree to treat foreign companies equally to native companies. In many situations, trade will benefit everyone. It's not evil to enable and encourage that trade.
That agreement is still for not affecting the profits of multinationals...
(Though of course there is no shortage of "free-market-trumps-all" advocates to point out that such tarrifs hurt the local economy etc).
To me, anthropomorphizing fictitious persons is an intellectual landmine. A fictitious person is an 'it', no more a moral or ethical agent than a rock. A mountain of rock isn't evil when a slide buries a party of hikers. Gravity is a law of natural systems. The behaviors of legally constructed fictitious persons are in accord with the "laws" of those systems.
I'll give you that it's trickier to deal with bad stuff done by a corporation. With an individual you can jail them but less so with a corp unless you can pin it on an individual.
I kind of like this. No free speech or even property ownership rights for corporations, unless we decide it is in our interest. Only humans can be the source of rights or interests.
It will involve a pretty big reworking of the laws, however. Let's get started!
Dropped 4 kg, everything tastes better, no energy drop at 4pm and the cravings disappeared within first two days. Friends report similar results.
This was also much easier than my previous attempts at "cutting down" sugar.
What I believe happened is that at the same time HFCS came on the market there was also a larger push to put sugar into a lot of things in place of fat.
Thus the introduction of HFCS seems to correlate with the North America weight problem but the North American weight problem also correlates with the increase in sugar in our diet -- and I understand from Sugar Coated and Dr. Lustig that is the causitive correlation.
To put this in perspective, that was about the same time that colonies in North America were being founded also by multinational corporations for the benefit of multinational corporations, often funded by venture capitalists among the royalty of Europe.
Sugar is a truly fungible material, exchangable at prevailing rates in any port. A single type of cargo that could pay its own way just about anywhere, allowing relatively greater voyage flexibility, in a world where logistics has always played a significant part.
While being the trader's or marketer's dream; concentrated chemical crystals which are habit forming in some way, with everyone everywhere being a potential repeat retail customer for "life".
The enthusiasm for this wealth from many different directions would be expected to have yielded very effective lobbyists to officials around the world for many generations by now. Once consumption has leveled to the sustainable growth rate, excess gains can more likely be made through manipulation.
Centuries of that has ended up supporting very strong plantation-type economies, often to the destruction of large numbers of a variety of different species, with human suffering very prominently included.
Continuous removal of wealth from Haiti, mandated long term US-Cuban non-relationship, and loss of Everglades wildlife by the millions are just some of the obvious casualties.
You, the consumer make it all possible.
It's not just for sweetening your coffee in the morning.
Now don't get me started on coffee . . .
On the one side, I am wondering that people are still consuming sugar—the last years more and more news/facts/studies pop up putting sugar in the right light. On the other side, addicted people usually say about their drugs that they make them feel good and that they are not addicted and keep consuming. But one big problem that it's quite hard to resist sugar. It's key ingredient of most products in a super market.
A spoonful of sugar: How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU
Now I know the secret sauce of weight loss, and feeling great at the same time, but the only thing that knocks me off this diet and lifestyle is stress. When under work related stress, I end up eating carbohydrate rich food which results in quick weight gain. I am in the process of figuring out a way to stay on LCHF because I long to going back to the feeling that I have experienced while on LCHF.
The problematic sugar is refined fructose. That is the stuff cannot be properly processed by the body and causes all kinds of chaos for your metabolism.
Even naturally occurring fructose, such as in fruit, is ok. But once you concentrate it into crystallized sugar or HFCS, it becomes a slow acting poison.
But it starts from milk, so there is lots of sugar it in.
Soda if just one of things with sugar (and diet soda has none anyway).
Most food, from McDonalds burgers to Chinese has loads of sugar.
And of course, losing weight is mostly a matter of reducing caloric intake. If you compensated for the sugar in sodas with extra food, you'll stay the same weight.
Sadly, people can't take simple advice.
If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 36% of US adults are considered obese.
It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice.
For example, killing is forbidden, except euthanasia (in certain countries). Hedge funds can exist, but they can't do any marketing and can only have "sophisticated" investors. In Sweden, alcohol is only sold by special stores.
I'd advocate the same approach to health & food safety. Businesses can sell everything, but there should be limits on (1) marketing (can't market sugar to kids, if at all), (2) taxes (more sugar, more tax - similar to tobacco), (3) general availability (can't buy cigarettes under 18), and (4) labeling (I support labeling of GMOs and of even trace amounts of trans fat).
Edit: especially number 4 above - I see no reason that a honest business would ever see information disclosure regulation as a negative thing; in addition, availability of (trustworthy) information will only increase the economic activity and decrease economic waste (again, only applies to honest companies and products).
Without a government, a corporation can only be strong, when their customers are spending enough money. With a government a corporation can grow out by regulations/subsidies. Regulations are destroying small competitors, not the big corps themselves.
Without the government enforcing this perversion we might not be in this situation (probably in some other situation but who knows).
I LOLed at https://www.milkywaybar.com/nutrition
> MILKY WAY® is a delicious and indulgent treat that can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.
Why lie? It's heavily-processed, high-fat, high-sugar candy. Of course it's unhealthy, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
IMO one great labeling victory has been restaurants that put calorie info on menus. Some of that has been by regulation, but regardless it's a good move.
What part of claiming to be able to enjoy a chocolate bar if you eat otherwise healthy is a "lie"? It's only "unhealthy" in the context of your overall diet.
I think there should be in Canada because we have a public health care system and the effects of sugar intake puts stresses on public health care, and those that who binge on sugar should be forced to pay for their higher costs on public health - I should not be subsiding their preventable issues.
What about ppl who eat greasy food and don't exercise?
Als, Wouldn't this merely penalize poor people with long hours and long commutes, poor people who are forced to live in food desserts, poor people who only have enough cash to buy bad food, poor people who have to feed a family of 5 on minimum wage.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/18/article-2344177-1A...
Also have a standard more detailed breakdown on the back.
It works well.
Sugar, on the other hand, is very obviously bad for you. It causes type 2 diabetes, it causes caries, and it also suppresses the feeling of satiety. Reducing your sugar intake is the easiest way to get into better shape.
Exercise is important, but it won't undo all the damage. E.g. if you heavily drink and smoke, no amount of exercise will undo that. It's the same with sugar. Exercise won't undo all those insulin spikes.
It's true that we need glucose, but we need it at a slow and steady rate. We don't need it at a rate which causes a massive insulin response. If your body actively combats the amount of sugar in your bloodstream, you apparently overdid it.
Non-processed food without added sugars is a good way to get a little bit of sugar over the course of several hours. The absorption rate is delayed by fibers. That's why fruits are fine while juice isn't.
The big problem with avoiding processed food is that it's really inconvenient. Cooking, just like exercise, takes time and effort.
No, excess sugar is bad for you.
I wouldn't say that sugar is a bad thing on its own, but the people who use it to enhance their products are not doing so to help our brains work better. They are doing that because they know that our species has an appreciation for this stuff and in their quest for short term profits they can externalize the long term costs associated with the effects of sugar overload which we ourselves do not have a way of detecting until it is too late.
I don't agree with all of the anti-sugar things. Probably shouldn't tax sugar itself, and in moderation it isn't a bad thing. Most folks don't have a lot of candy in their diet (because there are limits). But they do drink a good deal of sugary coffees and drinks when it would be better to eat a handful of fruit and drink some water. Most folks don't need the added sugar to feed their brain - fruit and vegetables and some grains wind up as that anyway.
It isn't sugar in and of itself that is such an issue, but that we tend to put it in everything, so our consumption is really high.
Sauces and prepackaged foods have an amazing amount of added sugar. The typical american breakfast is nearly a dessert. Cranberry juice, pushed as healthy, is generally sweetened, even if it is with concentrated fruit juice. All of these things add up especially when combined with lack of reasonable choices near you and large portion sizes. And trying to figure out what has added sugar and other such things has been proven difficult. And this is a major problem for folks trying to have some sort of balance in addition to being a problem for folks that are low-to-mid income and/or have little time to cook their own food as it gets harder to limit such things even in supposedly healthy food.
People want to be victims rather than taking responsibility for themselves. They need something to blame.
Unless I'm imposing costs on others (which, admittedly, sugar can do), don't tell me what I should or shouldn't eat.
There is no evidence to support this sort of chemtrail level conspiracy theory nonsense.
People whose livers are damaged have some difficulty processing fructose, but that is not the sugar's fault.
Dr. Lustig has made a name for himself by demonizing sugar. I do not believe that sugar is the demon it's commonly made out to be.
In the case of TPP the attempts to show how it benefits individuals rely on a lot of hypotheticals which doesn't wash if we take this stance. Everyone gains standing to stop corporations if their interests are affected, and the burden of proof is on those who want to permit some corporate behavior that anyone opposes.
In any events, rights seem orthogonal to morality. At least if morality constrains some portion of the acts that a moral agent could do because a right is a license for a particular course of action.
Anyway, while changing the laws might produce the greatest benefit and utilitarianism might be a good basis for rational moral action, that's not really my immediate intent. My goal is more pragmatic discussion and less sloganeering.
This may be true, but this statement is also missing the (possibly large?) group of people that simply have no benchmark in their mind for how much sugar is acceptable.
I've read several competing articles about daily limits to added sugar, and the number I have in my mind is 80g/day max. Given that a teaspoon of sugar is roughly 4g, this amounts to 20 teaspoons of sugar per day! I've wondered if nutrition labels listing sugar in terms of teaspoons instead of grams would help people visualize exactly how much sugar they are consuming.
I would agree that those who care about sugar intake probably will avoid Milky Ways, but I'm also concerned that if we don't have a % DV on sugar, people will perhaps assume that there is no ceiling. Why do we have % DV for fat, carbs, etc., but not sugar? Hmm, well maybe it's that no amount of sugar you eat today will harm you.
As a curious experiment, walk down the street and randomly survey people for how many grams of sugar they think they should limit themselves to.
It likely is as easy as cutting sugar out, just like smokers should cut cigarettes out, it is just hard to do because of the additives qualities of the drugs.
And like cigarettes, cutting down isn't really as effective as cutting it out nearly entirely, because a little bit of an additive drugs primes you for more.
First, "common sense" dietary advise is that fats are bad. That's why you see foods marketed as low-fat. Because common sense dietary advice has been focused on the wrong thing (fat instead of sugar/carbs), most people's conception of "eating healthy" is wrong.
Second, the route to being financially healthy and stable is incredibly simple: spend significantly less that you make. Yet some how a huge percentage of people in the US spend beyond their means. Could it not also be the case with cutting sugar & carbs that even if people actually knew what they needed to do, they still would not do it?
of just lying?
because every sugar product conceivable can be 'part of a nutritious breakfast' without any lying (but misleading a lot of people)
1. I think most athletes who purposely ingest a lot of carbs are probably not using sugar to accomplish this.
2. Greasy food is not actually bad for you. Grease is essentially fat, which is about as healthy as you can get. In a typical fast food meal, the greasy burger is the healthy part (minus the bun). It's the fries and soft drink which are the unhealthy part.
3. Grains are an incredibly affordable source of calories (it depends on the grain, but for the most part they are all upwards of 2,000 calories for $1). I don't think anybody's in danger of starving if sugar is more expensive.
Most commonly used HFCS varieties contains 42% or 55% fructose [1], which compares well with 50% in sucrose.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup#Compo...
Now, what is laughable is this idea of corporations suing governments because of lost profits from legislation.
Happened with cigarettes too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UsHHOCH4q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVe8wwNMh24
As for the idea of civil war: obvious hyperbole is obvious. Democracy needs fixing, or much larger problems -- but if there is no fixing, corporate corruption might ensure the problems.
Now, on the plus side it's that drive that improves the human condition. But it comes with a lot of negatives too.
They usually even have an explicit provision for withdrawal. For instance:
http://www.sice.oas.org/trade/nafta/chap-22.asp
So could South Korea use protectionism to build up internal industries today? Sure. But it might not want to, if a different set of choices were more likely to favor South Korea.
Completely dismisses the complex reality of how decisions are made within a country. It's possible, even likely, that a system exists that represents the will of a few who benefit over the majority who suffer.
I guess varying the preparation of the yogurt can still result in a wide range of sugar content.
E.g. if you eat some premade pasta sauce and some slices of toast, you're probably very close to exceeding your budget. So, it would be a good idea to not have a can of pop or some cookies.
Anyhow, if you only eat veggies and meat, you'll do just fine. The big problem is the added sugar found in most processed foods.
For example, I'm pretty curious about what impact NAFTA has had on illegal immigration from Mexico. Who knows if it has been significant, but surely it isn't zero (the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico is down substantially since it passed).
So, tremendous stealing of resources from the economy at large, increasing inequality and deterioration of society?
what about glycemic index? Surely foods with high GI are demonstrably worse?
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right. After all, you could also say that your individual liberty is being infringed by taxes - but you can always move to a deserted island, stop using the services provided by the governments, and pay no tax!
But that is not usually considered libertarian.
A libertarian scheme would usually be like 'certification should be a business, and foods should be certified sugar free by a specific certification company, and bear that company's sugar-free logo'.
Which I think is highly impractical
But then again, as I said above, I see business as a privilege, not a right.
Wow. Stop considering yourself a libertarian, seriously. This is authoritarian talk. All I see you arguing for is rules, and if somone points out their flaws, more and 'smarter' rules. This is the exact opposite of libertarianism.
One of the most statist phrases ever.
I wonder what you mean by that...
Those designations (organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, natural) have their place. The practice of it is where consumers get cheated.
Unfortunately, I can't sue.
Dishonest marketing does not infringe upon your property rights. I've never heard any libertarian claim that limiting speech, for any purpose, is justifiable base on libertarian ideals.
Where do you get that idea?
Such a scenario might well involve individuals engaged in banal evil and because individuals are moral agents, that's where blame and praise may accrue.
Anthropomorphizing a tobacco company muddies our thinking. A trade agreement is a document. The consequences of following the ideas in that document may be detrimental. But it is not a moral agent.
For me, a moral agent is not one that can 'feel responsible', but one that I can affect, by changing my own behavior, when it does 'something bad'.
The discussion of internal states is less useful. Also, the discussion of morality of people I can't affect is less useful.
If a person lobs avalanche prevention ordinance upon an unstable mountain slope thereby preventing the demise of the hikers I invented earlier, that person's actions might be said to have affected the behavior of the mountain.
If the person lobs ordinance after the invented hikers have met their fate, that person may well change the mountain slope geometry in such a manner that unique unstable accumulations are no longer physically possible [while others may be].
Clearly neither seems like a case where there is moral agency in the mountain. We get moral agency when the person lobbing ordinance onto the mountain slope is doing or forgoing the activity in the presence of hikers.
It's not very different for a cigarette manufacture to claim their product is healthy than it is for a construction company to agree to build you a house but then stop halfway through despite receiving payment. I think it's pretty clear that both would be opposed by most or all prominent forms of libertarianism.
> We're talking about cutting out a food category
> and presumably replacing it with another.
> I don't know of any convincing evidence this
> results in weight loss. Open to information of
> course!
Atkins - probably the most famous. Tim Ferris - relatively recent. Both good starting points for some large (though in some cases you'll find some insufficiently formal) studies.
The 2014 US film 'Fed Up' goes into some good detail about why this particular food category is bad for you - including a lovely animated graphic about a half hour in.
The actual article (did you read it?) this story points to has a box on p24 that describes this too - the 'a calorie is not a calorie'. That box includes several links to some more scientific research on the subject.
The underlying problem is that the sentiment you've expressed - replacing one food category with another can't possibly be effective at reducing weight / risk of disease, improving well-being, etc - is one that the sugar industry is very happy with, and regrettably is very widely held.
To many people it's intuitive that all energy is equal in terms of what your body does with it. Unfortunately there's no evidence that this is the case, and plenty of evidence that it isn't.
Do some searches on things like 'evidence of weight loss with low-carbohydrate diets' maybe append 'high fat' for some interesting variants.
You'll find some good studies, plus an abundance of anecdotes (blogs basically :) of people who've maintained or increased their raw energy input, while reducing their weight, through dietary changes alone.
I believe that people should keep track of what food they eat and depending how they feel, modify their particular diets accordingly.
My wife and I have reduced the processed foods we eat, and try to avoid sugar, and it seems to have had a great effect on how we feel and general health.
If you are a skeptic that is fine, skepticism should be the default, but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
I wasn't able to find anything in PubMed on the causal connection as you describe, though I did find papers like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684604/ on "Archaea and Fungi of the Human Gut Microbiome: Correlations with Diet and Bacterial Residents" which describes the correlation.
> Methanobrevibacter and Candida were positively associated with diets high in carbohydrates, but negatively with diets high in amino acids, protein, and fatty acids. A previous study emphasized that bacterial population structure was associated primarily with long-term diet, but high Candida abundance was most strongly associated with the recent consumption of carbohydrates. Methobrevibacter abundance was associated with both long term and recent consumption of carbohydrates.
How do you know it's Candida and not Methanobrevibacter?
I do take supplements specifically to reduce the amount of Candida in my gut (probiotics and caprylic acid) so my feeling of better heath in the last 4 or 5 years of avoiding processed foods might also be a result of these supplements and not just avoiding processed foods. I feel better, but I can't pinpoint why.
It's a flawed experiment, though. Literally the smallest possible sample size, extremely susceptible to the placebo effect, no controls.
I'd be interested in a large, rigorously controlled study on this, where the control group is fed convincing imitations of sweet (via artificial sweeteners) and processed (via presentation) foods. A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable.
re: "A single person's biased self-analysis isn't particularly valuable." I was not asking the other poster to accept my results, but rather suggesting that it would be worth the effort to do the experiment themselves.
Yes, there has been a lot written. And there is no evidence.
>but I would ask you to try staying away from processed foods and sugar for a few weeks and see if you feel better. It is an easy experiment to do.
95%+ of the food I eat comes from my property. There's nothing processed to cut out. I feel no different than I did when I was eating little ceasars pizza and coke every day for a year. This "experiment" is not an actual experiment, and would not support the claim in question even if it were.
A part of the publication explained how large lobbying efforts are made to make labeling systems less accurate or get rid of them altogether. So, in short, the industry spends a lot of money so consumers don't even know which foods are "suger foods" and which aren't.
The argument that people can't be rational and think for themselves, therefore they need other people (a political class) to decide for them, is, frankly, disgusting. No thanks.
You'll need governments deciding things anyway. Otherwise you can't come up with fair contracts when there's a difference of power in the parties of the contract (think e.g. costumer and manufacturer and food safety regulations), even when both sides are rational.
It's not that simple. For instance, kids aren't free to choose what they eat or drink and they can't make rationale decisions. Many adults lack the proper information and so on...
Forced for humans is not just "gun in the head", and it's not a binary either.
E.g. constant hammering with advertising on TV and internet can be an effective force for forcing people into stuff they wouldn't otherwise do.
Likewise, if the individuals forming a sugar industry marketing or lobbying entity could be held personally liable for the actions of that entity, it probably wouldn't exist. That's the closest thing I can think of to a concept of business law in a libertarian sense: If you own a certain fraction of General Motors, then you're responsible for a fraction of GM's debts, if those debts exceed its assets.
The humanity have to build new organizations that help the masses in picking up the right choices and we need new corporations that we can trust. Just have a look at the open source movement, where even commercial companies are opening their source code to improve to build up on trust. We need corporations that put labels of ingredients on their products. But if we force companies to do so, we're destroying the start up resources a new company needs to grow.
By forcing accurate labels we are disadvantaging small companies?
I am quite sure that, in a month of work, a well intentioned NGO with 1 or 2 people could develop a hand-holding website that every company could follow, for labelling.
Can you clarify?
I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.
A 'lens requirement' cuts the effectiveness of any information in a package. I'd wager to less than a tenth of readers, compared with readable packages.