Eat Your Sugar
This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We’ve read articles like this before? Only a few days ago in fact? The subject does seem to keep coming up. The Bush administration and profit-making entities on the one hand, and scientific advice and knowledge on the other. Bulldozers make better habitats than rivers do; wetlands pollute; academic scientists who receive grants should be kept off federal peer review panels while scientists with ties to profit-making entities should not. Day is night, up is down, black is red. Do we begin to detect a pattern here?
The President insists fighting fat is a matter for the individual, not the state. But today The Observer reveals how he and fellow senators have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from ‘Big Sugar’. One of his main fundraisers is sugar baron Jose ‘Pepe’ Fanjul, head of Florida Crystals, who has raised at least $100,000 for November’s presidential re-election campaign.
The individual, not the state. Right. And that means that the state must not interfere, even by so much as issuing reasonable dietary guidelines, with people who make money by selling sugar-added foods. It’s up to the individual to ignore all that advertising, have a little backbone, and just stay thin. Simple.
The Bush administration, which receives millions in funding from the sugar industry, argues there is little robust evidence to show that drinking sugary drinks or eating too much sugar is a direct cause of obesity. It particularly opposes a recommendation that just 10 per cent of people’s energy intake should come from added sugar. The US has a 25 per cent guideline.
25% added sugar – sure, that sounds about right. Could be worse. Could be 75% after all.
Too bad the spinach lobby isn’t as powerful as the sugar one. But I guess there just aren’t the bucks in spinach that there are in the sweet stuff.
This doesn’t totally speak to your topic but I thought I’d chime in anyway. Sugar subsidies are a good example relating to free trade and agricultural subsidies. This program is a ‘perfect storm’ with respect to broken policy.
Owing to the US price supports, the cost of sucrose (cane or beet sugar) is quite a bit higher in the US than overseas. A lot of sweetening tasks are done by ‘high fructose corn syrup’, which was developed in the 1960s. I think ADM is a big maker of this ag product – nearly all soft drinks in the US are sweetened with the stuff.
There’s some thought out there that high fructose corn syrup is an even worse in terms of promoting obesity than sucrose.
Corn syrup won’t work in some products, though, such as hard candy.
Relatively recently the Life Savers factory in Grand Rapids, MI moved to Canada purely because raw materials costs were cheaper there. About 500 jobs down the tubes. Likewise, the Spengler candy cane factory on the outskirts of Chicago went to Mexico along with another 500 jobs; the majority of candy canes sold in the US are now made overseas.
These were internationally competitive industries that would have done fine in the US if only the market distortion provided by ag subsidies was not present! And US consumers pay more for sucrose than otherwise – matching the direct federal price supports. It’s a unique case where one can directly point to direct damage to US industries through protectionism and price supports – usually the only damage is diffuse (in this case, consumer sugar prices) and relatively easy to dismiss out of hand.
As an aside, I personally prefer sucrose from sugar beets for my baking — Pioneer brand, from the Michigan Sugar Company of Saginaw.
Corn syrup – I’ve gathered it’s worse than sugar. US food processors of course stick it in absolutely everything, including foods where sweetening is quite disgusting – pasta sauces, salsa, salad dressing. Ecch. But we have to get our 25% quota of sugar, or something bad might happen.
What if the scientists are acknowledged experts in the field? For example, many experts in vaccine safety have at least some ties to the pharmaceutical industry, does that mean their opinion should be ignored. Isn’t it just a refined ad hominem attack?
There are biases from things other than money, as it clearly demonstrated by some lobby groups.
No it doesn’t mean their opinion should automatically be ignored, of course not, but the financial interest does need to be taken into account. As do other interests, yes. Certainly. But it’s not a good plan to warn off peer review by academics while giving a free pass to non-academics with ties to profit-making entities, which is what the article discusses.