10 ms·

How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU [pdf]

143 points by Jan_jw 10y ago

Jan_jw 10y ago
It's "interesting" to see the same methods that the tabacco lobby used are used again. We as a society haven't spent the past time in defending ourselves or our institutions any better then back in those days. Sad Indeed...
- yodsanklai 10y ago
  I wonder what point of view libertarians have on issues like this one. How can we regulate this without government intervention? what can we do to counter-balance the marketing power of those corporations?
  - monkeybuz 10y ago
    Just don't buy sugar 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.
    - blackoil 10y ago
      Just few not buying is not enough, some measure is needed to promote and market it to significant mass, counter advertisement to children...
      - monkeybuz 10y ago
        So go out and promote again big corps. Only education and enlightenment can build up a better world. Governments won't, governments are going to be bought by big corps.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - legulere 10y ago
      That requires humans to be perfectly rational like a homo economicus [1], but in reality people aren't. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
      - monkeybuz 10y ago
        No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. Just live healthy and promote your lifestyle to other persons, that is the best thing you can do for yourself and for any other person without harm.
        yodsanklai 10y ago
        > You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them 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...
        Brakenshire 10y ago
        I don't think promoting your lifestyle to others is something that has any force, even if any of us were interested in evangelism. People pick up their everyday behaviour largely from what they perceive as normal, and mass media, which is filled with adverts and even the programming heavily decided by commercial factors, has enormous power to dictate what is normal. At the grass-roots, parents have a degree of power to set a concept of normality for their kids, but that's also strongly driven by peer-pressure which is in turn driven by mass media.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. 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.
      - Kenji 10y ago
    - xg15 10y ago
      And non-sugar products are...? 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.
    - a_thro_away 10y ago
      How could we not buy "sugar products" when it is added without knowledge everywhere? Wouldn't your point of view also require removing labels; after all gov. regulation put them there. Sugar corp would sell to ag corp, with no transparency. How would we know how much sugar and compare? I know that humans over the past 50 years have been terrible judges on their own.
      - monkeybuz 10y ago
        Yes, this is a big problem, but if you're waiting for the government to solve this problem, you'll wait a long time. 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.
        josinalvo 10y ago
        WHAT? 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?
      - vixen99 10y ago
        No it isn't added everywhere. Not to fruit, vegetables, raw cereals, dairy products, meat or fish. If you feel you have to buy food industry products (those that undergo some kind of processing) then don't most of them offer low sugar or sugar free options? Finally it comes down to industry meeting human preferences. Change those and the industry will change. I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.
        osteele 10y ago
        Yes, those of us with disposable time and disposable income are able to avoid food industry products and/or to research those we ingest.
    - analog31 10y ago
      Without a government, there can be no corporations. A corporation is a creature of regulation. You can already operate a business under fewer regulations by forming a sole proprietorship or general partnership. Why don't people do that? The entitlement of liability limitation afforded by corporate regulation is what makes it possible for businesses to be bigger than a certain nominal size. Something like the "sugar industry" might not exist at all without that entitlement. 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.
  - baddox 10y ago
    The concept of a "lobby" wouldn't make very much sense in a world with little or no government regulation.
    - yodsanklai 10y ago
      no, but the concept of marketing still makes sense. We know that corporations devote a lot of resources in marketing. Is it ok to "brainwash" people into buying stuff that harm them?
      - baddox 10y ago
        My impression is that most forms of libertarianism would support the ability to take legal action against firms for dishonest marketing.
        Joof 10y ago
        In my opinion, this is basically every commercial or advertising I've ever seen. Emotional arguments damage my ability to make good decisions. Unfortunately, I can't sue.
        yodsanklai 10y ago
        What is dishonest marketing? for instance, using various tricks to make people smoke cigarettes or drink coke (that is bad for them), is that dishonest?
        zzalpha 10y ago
        Huh? No. 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?
        baddox 10y ago
        I've read a ton of libertarian stuff, and my impression is that they generally oppose dishonesty from one party in a commercial transaction. 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.
  - tomp 10y ago
    I'm very libertarian, but I view "liberty" primarily as an individual thing; I don't subscribe to the notion that corporations are people or have human rights. I think it's most certainly in the interest of us all that the governments enforce certain rules and protect us in some ways, as long as there are ways to avoid the rules. 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).
    - twoodfin 10y ago
      If I were trying to run a small bakery or confectionary under all the terms (and more, presumably) of your last paragraph, I'd have a hard time believing you took my individual liberty (or that of my customers) very seriously.
      - tomp 10y ago
        Again, something that is solvable with smart regulation. E.g. some rules apply only for businesses with more than $100k turnover, or $1M or whatever. Alternatively, your customers need to sign a statement that they will pay out of pocket for any medical costs resulting from eating your sugar (similar to "sophisticated investors" and hedge funds). 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!
        10y ago
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Libertarians are not the same thing as anarchists. Most libertarians agree that government is necessary, they simply discuss the limits of its power.
  - cwilkes 10y ago
    In this case isn't it the business - government collusion that has high sugar tariffs making corn syrup an attractive case? Without the government enforcing this perversion we might not be in this situation (probably in some other situation but who knows).
  - Kenji 10y ago
    My libertarian view: Let companies add as much sugar as they like and consumers shall decide what tastes and feels best. If there's too much sugar inside your food, nobody's gonna buy it. Not the government should decide how much sugar I eat, I should decide that. Everything else infantilizes the people. The only thing that should be illegal is actually lying about sugar content.
    - josinalvo 10y ago
      lying and non-disclosing? of just lying? because every sugar product conceivable can be 'part of a nutritious breakfast' without any lying (but misleading a lot of people)
mpg33 10y ago
I'm not sure if there should be a tax on sugar. But I definitely think that products should have a large visible colorful graphic on the front showing the amount of sugar content.. separate from the basic black and white nutritional info label.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  We have that in the UK. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/18/article-2344177-1A6404A6000005DC-529_634x543.jpg 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.
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    I think the UK 'traffic light' labeling is still voluntary.
- superswordfish 10y ago
  In the US sugar is listed without a DV% as well. People might reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of your daily recommended added sugar intake (per the article's 45g). I LOLed at https://www.milkywaybar.com/nutrition 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.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    No one would reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of the recommended daily sugar intake. The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already. 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.
    - chiefofgxbxl 10y ago
meira 10y ago
I don't feel very comfortable with this "anti-sugar" campaign. In a recent past, the villain was fat, now is sugar. I don't think both of them is the problem, the problem is a life without sports and workout. And sugar is the best energy source for the brain, as far as I know.
- zajd 10y ago
  The funny part is the best dietary advice is just "eat a good variety of things and don't eat too much". Going in to Whole Foods makes me want to blow my brains out.
  - finid 10y ago
    How come? Food is too expensive?
    - zajd 10y ago
      The amount of marketing designed to just confuse people about what's good for them. Organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, all natural, it's like a temple for upper middle class white people to reject 50 years of food science.
      - superswordfish 10y ago
        That woo is everywhere now though. Not sure why you're bringing race into it.
      - finid 10y ago
        > it's like a temple for upper middle class white people to reject 50 years of food science. 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.
  - superswordfish 10y ago
    There are many upsetting things about Whole Foods, but the food there is pretty varied, no?
coldcode 10y ago
I despise the corn lobby more. They ensure the high tariffs on imported sugar in order to protect the corn prices to produce corn syrup instead of using raw sugar. Only the US has soft drinks made with HFCS simply because of the tariff on imported sugar.
- superswordfish 10y ago
  Just as bad is how it's made trash-grade corn the preferred livestock feed.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  Canada has HFCS pop too.
- CyberDildonics 10y ago
  All that does is make it cheaper.
- bhouston 10y ago
  Accord to the movie Sugar Coated (on Netflix here in Canada) and Dr. Lustig there is no meaningful difference between HFCS and normal sugar -- they are equally quite bad for you. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar will achieve nothing I believe if you keep the sugar intake the same. 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.
  - hippich 10y ago
    weight-wise sugar has only half of fructose, and fructose is main offender. So yes, too much sugar is bad, but if you compare gram to gram, fructose is worse.
    - 10y ago
mark_l_watson 10y ago
This also shows the true evil of the TTP and TTIP trade deals: corporations can sue any government if their laws affect the corporation's profits. Pure evil. The article has the example of Mexico being sued for their protective laws.
- tdkl 10y ago
  It's not just evil, I presume in the future there will be civil wars because of that - people who'll have enough vs. corporations.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    And we'll only have seen it coming in our discussions and fiction for what... almost a century? Total shock!
  - praptak 10y ago
    Unfortunately with AI warfare we might soon be at the point where the are no human soldiers who could rebel and take side of the people.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      If you start concentrating the power of the army in fewer and fewer hands, they will become more powerful, not less.
      - d33 10y ago
        Could you elaborate? I didn't get your point.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - clearlyclear 10y ago
    I'm cutting past the corporation talk and going straight to the premise. It's one that we need to reject. 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.
agravier 10y ago
Look up Dr. Lustig's talks and articles for more in depth explanations on the effects of sugar on physiology.
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  The known fraud? Sure, look him up.
  - kristiandupont 10y ago
    Would you care to elaborate on that? Googling "dr lustig fraud" brings up mostly what looks like fabricated "debunking" articles from things like "The Scam Report".
    - taxicabjesus 10y ago
      There is no difference between glucose in sugar and glucose in starch, except that starch molecules are useless to the body when they get into the blood. 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.
    - MustardTiger 10y ago
      "Googling it brings up things I don't like so I'll call them fabricated". What is fabricated about it exactly? This is a man who directly lies all the time. He claims "sugar is toxic" and "sugar is poison". These are both outright lies, and not claims any respected scientist would make. The data doesn't even support his modest claims, much less his poison lies. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/ http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...
  - agravier 10y ago
    Enlighten me. Otherwise I'll file this under "baseless ad hominem", as I found him rather instructive till now.
throwaway5834 10y ago
Throwaway because I don't like posting about medical conditions. So, I'm a diabetic. It means I have to check everything and you know, 5-15g of extra sugar isn't something I can't just take into account I have to at least know. As such I'm always surprised at all the things that 'happen to' have 50% by weight in sugar (HFCS etc). I know that stuff like stevia exist @ 0 calories, and may taste a little bit worse but in my case it's something delicious with stevia or maybe no dessert - then it's fine if it's not perfect, you know? So what I don't get is since taste-wise cutting to 0 sugars and all stevia retains like 70%-80% of taste (with the exception of when the sugar is an important structural ingredient as with a meringue), why basically every product doesn't come in stevia and normal versions? Like, honey nut cheerios? Fine, stevia or artificial sugar version / normal version. They don't even need price parity or anything like that. I just don't get it. Coke and Pepsi do this right. I drink lots and lots of coke! always diet or zero, or pepsi max. I don't really get why something like, say, breakfast cereals, don't have "coke zero / diet coke" versions where it's artificial. I know it can be done, since I can do that myself from a box of artificial sweetener. It can't be a lack of demand - since by that metric, diet coke wouldn't exist. so I just don't get it. Take something like peanut butter, super healthy except for the added sugar which means I can't just eat it with abandon. Why wouldn't Jif peanut butter make a crappy version with artificial sugar. It's sugar-Jif or nothing for me (and many other people.) Same goes for like every second item in a store. why aren't there stevia Oreos, etc. these things just don't exist. why not? I can't eat oreos but I'd eat the shit out of stevia oreos and so would a ton of people. a lot of people just wanna eat sweets. they don't care just how good it tastes. You ever seen a fat guy turn down a donut because it didn't look good? Nobody cares about the taste... it's the taste of sweetness that we crave. . . . there must be a conspiracy of some kind here too. (I say this tongue in cheek, I don't actually see any conspiracy I'd just like to understand it better.)
davidgerard 10y ago
Actual title: A spoonful of sugar: How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU
praptak 10y ago
About 6 weeks ago I stopped ingesting sugar, to the extent that is practically possible. No candy & cakes, no sweet drinks and very diligent reading of labels on the non-obvious stuff. I do eat fruit but not processed into juice. 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.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  I think this should be the most obvious dietary advice for the overweight. Cut out entire classes of sugar intake such as soda and candy, except perhaps once per month or week. Sadly, people can't take simple advice.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    What a disgusting attitude you have. 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.
    - bhouston 10y ago
      I think sugar is additive, like tobacco, and with lots of bad health outcomes and because it is additive that is why it is hard to cut it out. Watch the movie Sugar Coated for one take on this line of reasoning. 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.
    - throwaway5834 10y ago
      Hold on, you have a giant non sequitur. For example, suppose the conversation were about entrepreneurship, and your parent comment maintained that anybody coudl start a corporation "easily" and for about $100. Now, suppose you replied: >If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 97% of US adults have never owned a company. >It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice. First, why am I using this example. Because we can all agree that actually, yes, anyone can pretty much start a corporation for $100. It's true. It's also true that 99% of people don't. That doesn't make starting a corporation 'harder'. It takes certain steps, and you have to go through with it. Whether 1%, 5%, 10%, or 75% of people have tried starting companies, has no impact on its difficulty. Likewise, whether 20%, 30%, 50%, or 90% of people are obese, does not influence the dfificulty of not being obese. Perhaps in the future only 1/10 people will be able to maintain an athletic, fit, weight. Perhaps they will have to throw away 80% of what they're served at restaurants, because they simply cannot order anything that does not have 2500 calories, whereas they want to eat 500. This is not far from the status quo in America. So, while it is certainly "easy" in a sense not to overeat, it's only "easy" in the same way as starting a corporation is "easy". It's easy on paper. If your parent argues that people should 'just do it' -- he's probably right.
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
We make ourselves fat and unhappy.
Kenji 10y ago
I cut back my sugar intake for half a year (bread, chocolate, sodas, etc.) and felt worse, my digestion becoming more erratic and irregular. Right now, I am enjoying a couple of pieces of delicious chocolate while laughing about the people who demonize certain classes of food. We know embarrassingly little about our digestion. Who knows, in 30 years we will say proteins are the devil and then we go back to hating fats. You have to go absolutely crazy on sugars to cause diabetes. We are talking about 'regularly skipping meals and then compensating by eating a couple of chocolate bars' crazy.
greenspot 10y ago
White sugar is crack. Highly addictive, creating fidgets who can't focus for 5 minutes chasing the next instant gratification. White sugar and wheat shake up one's blood sugar like no other. 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.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  There is no link between high sugar intake and hyperactivity.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
fuzzfactor 10y ago
The purpose of sugar is to have a spoilage-resistant renewable commodity capable of filling and refilling cargo ships to a net wealth density greater than most any choice having similar features at the time, over three hundred years ago. 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 . . .
GirlsCanCode 10y ago
We make ourselves fat and unhappy.

143 points by Jan_jw 10y ago

It's "interesting" to see the same methods that the tabacco lobby used are used again. We as a society haven't spent the past time in defending ourselves or our institutions any better then back in those days. Sad Indeed...

yodsanklai 10y ago
I wonder what point of view libertarians have on issues like this one. How can we regulate this without government intervention? what can we do to counter-balance the marketing power of those corporations?
- monkeybuz 10y ago
  Just don't buy sugar 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.
  - blackoil 10y ago
    Just few not buying is not enough, some measure is needed to promote and market it to significant mass, counter advertisement to children...
    - monkeybuz 10y ago
      So go out and promote again big corps. Only education and enlightenment can build up a better world. Governments won't, governments are going to be bought by big corps.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - legulere 10y ago
    That requires humans to be perfectly rational like a homo economicus [1], but in reality people aren't. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
    - monkeybuz 10y ago
      No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. Just live healthy and promote your lifestyle to other persons, that is the best thing you can do for yourself and for any other person without harm.
      - yodsanklai 10y ago
        > You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them 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...
      - Brakenshire 10y ago
        I don't think promoting your lifestyle to others is something that has any force, even if any of us were interested in evangelism. People pick up their everyday behaviour largely from what they perceive as normal, and mass media, which is filled with adverts and even the programming heavily decided by commercial factors, has enormous power to dictate what is normal. At the grass-roots, parents have a degree of power to set a concept of normality for their kids, but that's also strongly driven by peer-pressure which is in turn driven by mass media.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >No it don't. You're free to choose unhealthy products, but aren't forced to choose them. 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.
    - Kenji 10y ago
  - xg15 10y ago
    And non-sugar products are...? 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.
  - a_thro_away 10y ago
    How could we not buy "sugar products" when it is added without knowledge everywhere? Wouldn't your point of view also require removing labels; after all gov. regulation put them there. Sugar corp would sell to ag corp, with no transparency. How would we know how much sugar and compare? I know that humans over the past 50 years have been terrible judges on their own.
    - monkeybuz 10y ago
      Yes, this is a big problem, but if you're waiting for the government to solve this problem, you'll wait a long time. 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.
      - josinalvo 10y ago
        WHAT? 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?
    - vixen99 10y ago
      No it isn't added everywhere. Not to fruit, vegetables, raw cereals, dairy products, meat or fish. If you feel you have to buy food industry products (those that undergo some kind of processing) then don't most of them offer low sugar or sugar free options? Finally it comes down to industry meeting human preferences. Change those and the industry will change. I agree it's often a problem but why not carry a lens to check the small print on the package.
      - osteele 10y ago
        Yes, those of us with disposable time and disposable income are able to avoid food industry products and/or to research those we ingest.
  - analog31 10y ago
    Without a government, there can be no corporations. A corporation is a creature of regulation. You can already operate a business under fewer regulations by forming a sole proprietorship or general partnership. Why don't people do that? The entitlement of liability limitation afforded by corporate regulation is what makes it possible for businesses to be bigger than a certain nominal size. Something like the "sugar industry" might not exist at all without that entitlement. 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.
- baddox 10y ago
  The concept of a "lobby" wouldn't make very much sense in a world with little or no government regulation.
  - yodsanklai 10y ago
    no, but the concept of marketing still makes sense. We know that corporations devote a lot of resources in marketing. Is it ok to "brainwash" people into buying stuff that harm them?
    - baddox 10y ago
      My impression is that most forms of libertarianism would support the ability to take legal action against firms for dishonest marketing.
      - Joof 10y ago
        In my opinion, this is basically every commercial or advertising I've ever seen. Emotional arguments damage my ability to make good decisions. Unfortunately, I can't sue.
      - yodsanklai 10y ago
        What is dishonest marketing? for instance, using various tricks to make people smoke cigarettes or drink coke (that is bad for them), is that dishonest?
      - zzalpha 10y ago
        Huh? No. 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?
        baddox 10y ago
        I've read a ton of libertarian stuff, and my impression is that they generally oppose dishonesty from one party in a commercial transaction. 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.
- tomp 10y ago
  I'm very libertarian, but I view "liberty" primarily as an individual thing; I don't subscribe to the notion that corporations are people or have human rights. I think it's most certainly in the interest of us all that the governments enforce certain rules and protect us in some ways, as long as there are ways to avoid the rules. 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).
  - twoodfin 10y ago
    If I were trying to run a small bakery or confectionary under all the terms (and more, presumably) of your last paragraph, I'd have a hard time believing you took my individual liberty (or that of my customers) very seriously.
    - tomp 10y ago
      Again, something that is solvable with smart regulation. E.g. some rules apply only for businesses with more than $100k turnover, or $1M or whatever. Alternatively, your customers need to sign a statement that they will pay out of pocket for any medical costs resulting from eating your sugar (similar to "sophisticated investors" and hedge funds). 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!
      - 10y ago
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Libertarians are not the same thing as anarchists. Most libertarians agree that government is necessary, they simply discuss the limits of its power.
- cwilkes 10y ago
  In this case isn't it the business - government collusion that has high sugar tariffs making corn syrup an attractive case? Without the government enforcing this perversion we might not be in this situation (probably in some other situation but who knows).
- Kenji 10y ago
  My libertarian view: Let companies add as much sugar as they like and consumers shall decide what tastes and feels best. If there's too much sugar inside your food, nobody's gonna buy it. Not the government should decide how much sugar I eat, I should decide that. Everything else infantilizes the people. The only thing that should be illegal is actually lying about sugar content.
  - josinalvo 10y ago
    lying and non-disclosing? of just lying? because every sugar product conceivable can be 'part of a nutritious breakfast' without any lying (but misleading a lot of people)

mpg33 10y ago

I'm not sure if there should be a tax on sugar. But I definitely think that products should have a large visible colorful graphic on the front showing the amount of sugar content.. separate from the basic black and white nutritional info label.

noir_lord 10y ago
We have that in the UK. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/18/article-2344177-1A6404A6000005DC-529_634x543.jpg 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.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  I think the UK 'traffic light' labeling is still voluntary.
superswordfish 10y ago
In the US sugar is listed without a DV% as well. People might reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of your daily recommended added sugar intake (per the article's 45g). I LOLed at https://www.milkywaybar.com/nutrition 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.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  No one would reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of the recommended daily sugar intake. The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already. 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.
  - chiefofgxbxl 10y ago

meira 10y ago

I don't feel very comfortable with this "anti-sugar" campaign. In a recent past, the villain was fat, now is sugar. I don't think both of them is the problem, the problem is a life without sports and workout. And sugar is the best energy source for the brain, as far as I know.

zajd 10y ago
The funny part is the best dietary advice is just "eat a good variety of things and don't eat too much". Going in to Whole Foods makes me want to blow my brains out.
- finid 10y ago
  How come? Food is too expensive?
  - zajd 10y ago
    The amount of marketing designed to just confuse people about what's good for them. Organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, all natural, it's like a temple for upper middle class white people to reject 50 years of food science.
    - superswordfish 10y ago
      That woo is everywhere now though. Not sure why you're bringing race into it.
    - finid 10y ago
      > it's like a temple for upper middle class white people to reject 50 years of food science. 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.
- superswordfish 10y ago
  There are many upsetting things about Whole Foods, but the food there is pretty varied, no?

coldcode 10y ago

I despise the corn lobby more. They ensure the high tariffs on imported sugar in order to protect the corn prices to produce corn syrup instead of using raw sugar. Only the US has soft drinks made with HFCS simply because of the tariff on imported sugar.

superswordfish 10y ago
Just as bad is how it's made trash-grade corn the preferred livestock feed.
MustardTiger 10y ago
Canada has HFCS pop too.
CyberDildonics 10y ago
All that does is make it cheaper.
bhouston 10y ago
Accord to the movie Sugar Coated (on Netflix here in Canada) and Dr. Lustig there is no meaningful difference between HFCS and normal sugar -- they are equally quite bad for you. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar will achieve nothing I believe if you keep the sugar intake the same. 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.
- hippich 10y ago
  weight-wise sugar has only half of fructose, and fructose is main offender. So yes, too much sugar is bad, but if you compare gram to gram, fructose is worse.
  - 10y ago

mark_l_watson 10y ago

This also shows the true evil of the TTP and TTIP trade deals: corporations can sue any government if their laws affect the corporation's profits. Pure evil. The article has the example of Mexico being sued for their protective laws.

tdkl 10y ago
It's not just evil, I presume in the future there will be civil wars because of that - people who'll have enough vs. corporations.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  And we'll only have seen it coming in our discussions and fiction for what... almost a century? Total shock!
- praptak 10y ago
  Unfortunately with AI warfare we might soon be at the point where the are no human soldiers who could rebel and take side of the people.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    If you start concentrating the power of the army in fewer and fewer hands, they will become more powerful, not less.
    - d33 10y ago
      Could you elaborate? I didn't get your point.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- clearlyclear 10y ago
  I'm cutting past the corporation talk and going straight to the premise. It's one that we need to reject. 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.

agravier 10y ago

Look up Dr. Lustig's talks and articles for more in depth explanations on the effects of sugar on physiology.

MustardTiger 10y ago
The known fraud? Sure, look him up.
- kristiandupont 10y ago
  Would you care to elaborate on that? Googling "dr lustig fraud" brings up mostly what looks like fabricated "debunking" articles from things like "The Scam Report".
  - taxicabjesus 10y ago
    There is no difference between glucose in sugar and glucose in starch, except that starch molecules are useless to the body when they get into the blood. 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.
  - MustardTiger 10y ago
    "Googling it brings up things I don't like so I'll call them fabricated". What is fabricated about it exactly? This is a man who directly lies all the time. He claims "sugar is toxic" and "sugar is poison". These are both outright lies, and not claims any respected scientist would make. The data doesn't even support his modest claims, much less his poison lies. http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/ http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...
- agravier 10y ago
  Enlighten me. Otherwise I'll file this under "baseless ad hominem", as I found him rather instructive till now.

throwaway5834 10y ago

Throwaway because I don't like posting about medical conditions. So, I'm a diabetic. It means I have to check everything and you know, 5-15g of extra sugar isn't something I can't just take into account I have to at least know. As such I'm always surprised at all the things that 'happen to' have 50% by weight in sugar (HFCS etc). I know that stuff like stevia exist @ 0 calories, and may taste a little bit worse but in my case it's something delicious with stevia or maybe no dessert - then it's fine if it's not perfect, you know? So what I don't get is since taste-wise cutting to 0 sugars and all stevia retains like 70%-80% of taste (with the exception of when the sugar is an important structural ingredient as with a meringue), why basically every product doesn't come in stevia and normal versions? Like, honey nut cheerios? Fine, stevia or artificial sugar version / normal version. They don't even need price parity or anything like that. I just don't get it. Coke and Pepsi do this right. I drink lots and lots of coke! always diet or zero, or pepsi max. I don't really get why something like, say, breakfast cereals, don't have "coke zero / diet coke" versions where it's artificial. I know it can be done, since I can do that myself from a box of artificial sweetener. It can't be a lack of demand - since by that metric, diet coke wouldn't exist. so I just don't get it. Take something like peanut butter, super healthy except for the added sugar which means I can't just eat it with abandon. Why wouldn't Jif peanut butter make a crappy version with artificial sugar. It's sugar-Jif or nothing for me (and many other people.) Same goes for like every second item in a store. why aren't there stevia Oreos, etc. these things just don't exist. why not? I can't eat oreos but I'd eat the shit out of stevia oreos and so would a ton of people. a lot of people just wanna eat sweets. they don't care just how good it tastes. You ever seen a fat guy turn down a donut because it didn't look good? Nobody cares about the taste... it's the taste of sweetness that we crave. . . . there must be a conspiracy of some kind here too. (I say this tongue in cheek, I don't actually see any conspiracy I'd just like to understand it better.)

davidgerard 10y ago

Actual title: A spoonful of sugar: How the food lobby fights sugar regulation in the EU

praptak 10y ago

About 6 weeks ago I stopped ingesting sugar, to the extent that is practically possible. No candy & cakes, no sweet drinks and very diligent reading of labels on the non-obvious stuff. I do eat fruit but not processed into juice. 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.

microcolonel 10y ago
I think this should be the most obvious dietary advice for the overweight. Cut out entire classes of sugar intake such as soda and candy, except perhaps once per month or week. Sadly, people can't take simple advice.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  What a disgusting attitude you have. 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.
  - bhouston 10y ago
    I think sugar is additive, like tobacco, and with lots of bad health outcomes and because it is additive that is why it is hard to cut it out. Watch the movie Sugar Coated for one take on this line of reasoning. 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.
  - throwaway5834 10y ago
    Hold on, you have a giant non sequitur. For example, suppose the conversation were about entrepreneurship, and your parent comment maintained that anybody coudl start a corporation "easily" and for about $100. Now, suppose you replied: >If it were as easy as you say, everyone would just do it. 97% of US adults have never owned a company. >It's obviously a lot more complicated and harder than taking "simple" advice. First, why am I using this example. Because we can all agree that actually, yes, anyone can pretty much start a corporation for $100. It's true. It's also true that 99% of people don't. That doesn't make starting a corporation 'harder'. It takes certain steps, and you have to go through with it. Whether 1%, 5%, 10%, or 75% of people have tried starting companies, has no impact on its difficulty. Likewise, whether 20%, 30%, 50%, or 90% of people are obese, does not influence the dfificulty of not being obese. Perhaps in the future only 1/10 people will be able to maintain an athletic, fit, weight. Perhaps they will have to throw away 80% of what they're served at restaurants, because they simply cannot order anything that does not have 2500 calories, whereas they want to eat 500. This is not far from the status quo in America. So, while it is certainly "easy" in a sense not to overeat, it's only "easy" in the same way as starting a corporation is "easy". It's easy on paper. If your parent argues that people should 'just do it' -- he's probably right.

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

We make ourselves fat and unhappy.

Kenji 10y ago

I cut back my sugar intake for half a year (bread, chocolate, sodas, etc.) and felt worse, my digestion becoming more erratic and irregular. Right now, I am enjoying a couple of pieces of delicious chocolate while laughing about the people who demonize certain classes of food. We know embarrassingly little about our digestion. Who knows, in 30 years we will say proteins are the devil and then we go back to hating fats. You have to go absolutely crazy on sugars to cause diabetes. We are talking about 'regularly skipping meals and then compensating by eating a couple of chocolate bars' crazy.

greenspot 10y ago

White sugar is crack. Highly addictive, creating fidgets who can't focus for 5 minutes chasing the next instant gratification. White sugar and wheat shake up one's blood sugar like no other. 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.

whamlastxmas 10y ago
There is no link between high sugar intake and hyperactivity.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

fuzzfactor 10y ago

The purpose of sugar is to have a spoilage-resistant renewable commodity capable of filling and refilling cargo ships to a net wealth density greater than most any choice having similar features at the time, over three hundred years ago. 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 . . .

GirlsCanCode 10y ago

We make ourselves fat and unhappy.