US Sugar Industry Threathens World Health Organization Over New Healthy
Eating Guidelines

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        Published on Monday, April 21, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
            Sugar Industry Threatens to Scupper WHO
            by Sarah Boseley

            The sugar industry in the US is threatening to bring the World
Health Organization to its knees by demanding that Congress end its funding
unless the WHO scraps guidelines on healthy eating, due to be published on
Wednesday.

            The threat is being described by WHO insiders as tantamount to
blackmail and worse than any pressure exerted by the tobacco lobby.

            In a letter to Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO's director
general, the Sugar Association says it will "exercise every avenue available
to expose the dubious nature" of the WHO's report on diet and nutrition,
including challenging its $406m (£260m) funding from the US.

            The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar
should account for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the
review by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is
scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a
quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.

            "Taxpayers' dollars should not be used to support misguided,
non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of
Americans, much less the rest of the world," says the letter. "If necessary
we will promote and encourage new laws which require future WHO funding to
be provided only if the Organization accepts that all reports must be
supported by the preponderance of science."

            The association, together with six other big food industry
groups, has also written to the US health secretary, Tommy Thompson, asking
him to use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn. The coalition
includes the US Council for International Business, comprising more than 300
companies, including Coca-Cola and Pepsico.

            The sugar lobby's strong-arm tactics are nothing new, according
to Professor Phillip James, the British chairman of the International
Obesity Taskforce who wrote the WHO's previous report on diet and nutrition
in 1990. The day after his expert committee had decided on a 10% limit, the
World Sugar Organization"went into overdrive", he said. "Forty ambassadors
wrote to the WHO insisting our report should be removed, on the grounds that
it would do irreparable damage to countries in the developing world."

            Prof James was called in by the American embassy in Geneva "to
explain to them why they were suddenly getting an enormous amount of
pressure from the state department to have our report retracted". The sugar
industry, he discovered, had hired one of Washington's top lobbying
companies.

            The sugar lobby was unsuccessful that time, but now, he says,
"we are getting a replay, but much more powerfully based, because the food
industry seems to have a much greater influence on the Bush government".

            Since his 1990 report, the International Life Sciences
Institute, founded by Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, General Foods, Kraft and
Procter and Gamble, has also gained accreditation to the WHO and the UN's
Food and Agriculture Organization

            At one point, says Prof James, "I was asked not to send any more
emails about any of the dietary aspects of health that related to sugar. I
was told that within 24 hours of my sending a note, the food industry would
be telephoning and arranging dinners."

            Aubrey Sheiham, professor of dental public health at University
College, London, Medical School, said he also encountered the strength of
the sugar lobby when he was one of the experts involved in putting together
an EC guideline called Eurodiet.

            "I wrote the sugar part of that," he said. "When we met in Crete
 [in June 2000], the sugar people said if the 10% [limit] was in, the whole
report would be blocked. I remember we went into a huddle with various
people and some of the diplomats, and we were meeting in people's bedrooms
and saying, how can we work around this?"

            In the end, he said, they worked out that a recommendation that
nobody should eat sugar more than four times a day was equivalent to a 10%
limit. But he considered the committee had been bullied.

            The Sugar Association objects to the new report having been
published in draft on the WHO's website for consultation purposes, without
what it considers "a broad external peer-review process". It wants a full
economic analysis of the impact of the recommendations on all 192 member
countries. In the letter to Dr Brundtland, it demands that Wednesday's joint
launch with the Food and Agriculture Organization be cancelled.

            The report, Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic
Diseases, has already been heavily criticized by the soft drinks industry,
whose members sell virtually everywhere in the world, including developing
countries where malnutrition is beginning to coexist with the obesity common
in affluent countries.

            The industry does not accept the WHO report's conclusion that
sweetened soft drinks contribute to the obesity pandemic. The
Washington-based National Soft Drink Association said the report's
"recommendation on added sugars is too restrictive". The association backs a
25% limit.

            The WHO strongly rejects the sugar lobby's criticisms. An
official said a team of 30 independent experts had considered the scientific
evidence and its conclusions were in line with the findings of 23 national
reports which have, on average, set targets of 10% for added sugars.

            In the letter to Mr Thompson, the sugar lobby relies heavily on
a recent report from the Institute of Medicine for its claim that a 25%
sugar intake is acceptable. But last week, Harvey Fineberg, president of the
institute, wrote to Mr Thompson to warn that the report was being
misinterpreted. He says it does not make a recommendation on sugar intake.

            © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

            ###





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