AFRO-NETS> Sugar and WHO

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Sugar and WHO
-------------

From: "Ted Greiner" <ted_greiner@hotmail.com>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,940287,00.html

Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO
Sarah Boseley, health editor
The Guardian

The sugar industry in the US is threatening to bring the World Health 
Organisation to its knees by demanding that Congress end its funding 
unless the WHO scraps guidelines on healthy eating, due to be pub-
lished 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 in-
dustry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should ac-
count for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the re-
view by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is sci-
entifically 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 organisation 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him to use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn.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 coali-
tion 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 Organisation "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 coun-
tries 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 govern-
ment". Since his 1990 report, the International Life Sciences Insti-
tute, 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 Organisation. At one point, says Prof 
James, "I was asked not to send any more emails about any of the die-
tary 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 Col-
lege, 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 peo-
ple 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 consid-
ered 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 Organisation 
be cancelled. The report, Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of 
Chronic Diseases, has already been heavily criticised 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 indus-
try 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 re-
port's "recommendation on added sugars is too restrictive". The asso-
ciation 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. 
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