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STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo., - A lengthy battle is brewing which
will pit public health and nutrition groups against sugar, beverage
and chocolate producers and will mimic the war on tobacco, U.S. food
industry officials said Wednesday.
Susan Smith, senior vice-president of public and legislative affairs
for the National Confectioners Association and Chocolate
Manufacturers Association, said at the 17th annual Sweetener
Symposium that sugar and sweeteners like corn syrup are increasingly
being blamed for the fact that over half of all Americans are
overweight or obese.
"Unfortunately, and it's a really easy answer, (opponents
say) let's blame sugar. This is the easiest target for them,'' Smith
said.
"This is really just the beginning. They are looking at the
tobacco model.''
The coalition turning their sights on sugar the same way they did
on tobacco includes groups like the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), surgeon general and the Centers
for Disease Control, she said.
The other groups would include nutrition panels and scientists
linked to environmental causes who have denounced the "toxic
food environment'' Americans live in.
The battle is expected to intensify after news that thousands of
Americans will likely die due to complications resulting from
obesity. Richard Keelor, president and chief executive of The Sugar
Association representing sugar processors, said at the same
conference there is a politics of nutrition that is targeting the
sweetener business.
"It's going to get a lot worse,'' he said. "Certain
sectors of the government have an agenda to reduce sweetener
consumption.'' He said it was naive to simply blame consumption of
sweets and snacks for obesity among Americans, saying the government
should bring back physical education into schools to encourage
exercise among children.
"We have TV, we have computer games. We're not teaching
people to survive.'' Keelor, an exercise physiologist, said. "I
think it will be a battle until we get physical education into
schools.''
On the federal level, Smith said there may be attempts to set
dietary guidelines and cited the petition before the FDA for the
labeling of "added sugars'' in foods. She said the industry is
apprehensive about restrictions on advertising to children which may
even include a ban on yogurt ads.
Vending machines in schools may not be allowed to sell food
containing sugar and there is the increasing prospect of "food
taxes,'' Smith added. "That's a real possibility.''
A group called "Don't Tax Food Coalition'' faces a tough
fight on such taxes when state legislatures go back to work next
year. Smith said her group and the American Sugar Alliance, which
had been at loggerheads before over the U.S. sugar program, should
join hands on this issue because of the threat linking sugar and
sweeteners like corn syrup to obesity.
"It's going to affect consumption of their products as
well,'' she told Reuters. Keelor added that top executives of
beverage and food companies should also take part in a campaign to
get the message out that sweetener goods must not shoulder all of
the blame on America's obesity problem.
"We're not getting much support from the food and beverage
industry,'' he said in a separate interview.
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