Three Views of Added Sugar

Perhaps you’ve heard that FDA is moving to update the Nutrition Facts panel with information on added sugars, along with some other changes intended to make it simpler and more relevant to consumers. More than 170,000 people were moved to submit comments on this proposal before the comment period closed on August 1.

FDA is still sorting through all those comments but three points of view are coming into focus:

1. Health Advocates. For most of the health advocates — like the Obesity Society, the American Medical Association, and the American Heart Association — the decision to support this change was easy. Recommendations from the Institute of Medicine, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and the American Heart Association have for some time urged people to reduce their consumption of added sugars. Yet food labels make it all but impossible to tell how much added sugar a product contains. One must comb through ingredient lists and guess. Putting added sugars on the label solves the problem.
    
2. Nutrition Scientists. Some nutrition scientists were more torn about this change. Legitimate worries about the unintended consequences of focusing on added sugars surfaced in their calls for more research and consensus building. Reflecting this concern, the American Society for Nutrition “recommends careful consideration of the totality of the scientific evidence, as well as consideration of compliance and other technical issues.”
    
3. Food Industry. The food industry was mostly, but not uniformly opposed to this change. One of the largest industry groups — the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) — filed comments that reflected a split in their organization. The GMA majority opinion opposed added sugars labeling, thowing down every legal and scientific argument they could muster. But GMA also filed a minority view of their members supporting the change. The minority view was an unqualified endorsement of FDA’s proposal, saying “ample evidence shows that distinguishing the amount of added sugars from naturally occurring sugars present in foods will help consumers to maintain healthful dietary practices.”

 
One of the most (unintentionally) entertaining comments came from the California Dairy Institute. “Lactose in its pure form,” they said, should not be counted as added sugar when added to a food product. We give them credit for boldness.

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” — Buddha

Click here to browse through the public comments and here to read more from Reuters.

Blueberries with Added Sugar, photograph © Raj Stevenson / flickr

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