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Industry Misinformation and Embedded Advertising

A link to this New York Times article showed up in one of my RSS feeds the other day.  I don’t read the New York Times very much, and if this article is an indication of their current level of journalism, this must be the reason.

A few years ago in Europe they changed the rules in most countries concerning advertising in government funded media.  It used to be banner advertising was allowed, but embedded advertising was generally not allowed.  Embedded advertising is when a media company accepts payment for publishing an article.  At first the amount of garbage that was showing up in the media here was so overwhelming and so offensive, people complained loudly.  Now it’s a little less offensive, but still there.  In America it’s been the norm for decades.  I think for many of us here in Europe, the before and after picture of this rule change has been a real eye-opener.

The article above immediately set off my bullshit detector, and it stands out as a perfect example of the misinformation published these days by the food industry as embedded advertising.  It’s almost written in Michael Pollan style.

In Europe the food industry recently spent a record setting €1 billion requiring new labelling on foods, listing ‘nutritional analysis’ such as fats, sugars, carbohydrates and so on.  This article shows perfectly how the food industry manipulates our perception of food, into thinking they are the good guys and how they are trying to make healthy food for us.  This article is a perfect example of how we’re supposed to learn to eat more processed foods.

The one thing I do agree with this article on is their comparison of themselves with the tobacco lobby of a decade or two ago.  In many ways the food industry is much more powerful than the tobacco lobby ever was, and food is after all something we all need to eat.  It’s nice to see them giving us proof, in their own words, of how we need to take them more seriously than we have ever taken the tobacco industry.

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Dutch Research Nonsense

If there was ever a finer example of research study nonsense, I can’t remember when.  Supposedly Dutch researchers have come up with the first ‘hard evidence’ that drinks containing sugar contribute to childhood obesity.

Yes, I know.  If you believe the comments on that post, or talk with worried moms the world over, you’ll know it’s just a fact that sugar is bad for children.  If you follow the links on the post through, and actually read the referenced studies, you get a different story.

This study only included youngsters who were already drinking sugary drinks, because it was considered unethical to possibly give them sugary drinks otherwise!

The children in The Netherlands were given specially manufactured artificially flavored non-carbonated drinks containing sucralose and acesulfame potassium, two ingredients not normally found in commonly available sugar free drinks.  They then supervised the drinking of the beverages, and tested for traces of these chemicals in the urine of the children.  At the conclusion of this study, they determined these children gained less weight than their peers who drank a similar beverage made with real sugar.

I’ll bet those drinks tasted vile!

So what have we learned here?  It seems to me, we’ve learned large quantities of these two chemicals delay weight gain in the 5-12 year age range.

Is there really anything else to be gained from this study?  Apparently we’re supposed to conclude drinking diet soft drinks as an alternative to those made with sugar is healthier for children.

Did anyone read any conclusions about the long term health of the children?  What about longer term weight gain?  A similar study in the US noted weight loss was limited to the first year, and after that returned.  Was there any other way the health of those children were improved with all those chemicals?  What about the children who drank water instead of specially manufactured artificially flavored drinks?  Don’t we know when people diet to lose weight, they almost always gain it back and then some?

Drinks containing sugar have been around for a long time, especially if you consider fruit juice too.  Both sugar free drinks and childhood obesity on the other hand are relatively new, especially in Europe.  Is it a coincidence the widespread consumption of sugar free drinks in the US corresponds with the obesity epidemic there?  What about other changes in the diets of children.  Could a significant increase in the amount of processed food have something to do with it?

Isn’t it a little strange there’s money for a study to show sugar free drinks are good for you, but no money to show the dangers of sugar substitutes?  What about that Italian study from a few years ago that showed aspartame causes cancer?

We need to spend more time worrying about the processed food children are eating, including sugar substitutes, and less time on sugar.  We need some real science!

Is this any different from the ‘science’ that showed us all those energy saving light bulbs were good for us?

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Sugar Tax

Wow, the politics in the US are sure heating up and getting intertwined!  Time was where you had a few powerful lobbies, who all looked after their own interests.  Increasingly the US is starting to see powerful lobbies working together in very convoluted ways.  Now a sugar tax?

World sugar consumption has tripled in the last 50 years!

Well first of all the world population has more than doubled in that time, so this accounts for most of it.  Beyond this one of the things Michael Pollan pointed out in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma is during the time high fructose corn syrup was introduced into US soft drinks, America’s consumption of ordinary sugar stayed nearly constant.  In other words, the HFCS was just more sugar added on top of existing consumption, and HFCS probably doesn’t satisfy an appetite for real sugar.

Considering an increase of all sweeteners together is misleading.  If you only consider per capita consumption of ordinary sugar, you aren’t likely to see a meaningful increase over the last 50 years.

Not only is a modest amount of ordinary sugar a relatively safe and constructive part of a balanced diet, but it’s an appetite suppressant and trying to eliminate or reduce it will almost certainly lead to the overconsumption of other foods.  It’s known for example that people who drink sugar-free soft drinks are statistically heavier than those who drink the sugared version, and this could be one reason.

Just Like Europe

It’s true a few countries in Europe have special taxes for soft drinks, but as far as I know this is not a tax on sugar.  In particular drinks containing aspartame are not exempt from these taxes.

In Europe it’s more common to drink soft drinks in restaurants, who often depend on sales of drinks for a large part of their profits.  It’s less common to drink soft drinks at home, and there are very few people who depend on soft drinks as part of their grocery shopping.  Taxing soft drinks is more a way to tax eating out at a restaurant than anything else.  Soft drinks are also usually an imported product, and by taxing them it encourages the consumption of local products like beers and wines.

In the US many people who consume large amounts of soft drinks live in the so-called food deserts of inner cities, with limited access to healthier alternatives.  A sugar tax would only serve to raise the grocery bill of these people.  A sugar tax in the US would be a disproportionate tax on the poor.

More Profit in Sugar Alternatives

The problem is while sugar is a commodity crop, and relatively speaking expensive to transport, process and store, as well as subject to swings in price depending on availability, the alternatives like HFCS and aspartame are not.  These alternatives are patented, cheap to manufacture and represent huge profits for the companies that sell them and own the associated intellectual property rights.

Calories

The argument is sugar ‘and other sweeteners’ contain too many calories, making it ‘better’ to consume an artificial sweetener like aspartame.  In fact there is not a single shred of credible evidence to suggest any link between the number of calories you consume and health.  Calories are a very old unit of measure determined by literally burning food and seeing how much heat is given off.  Your body does not metabolize food this way, and you can’t make any comparisons.

It’s true, there are low calorie diets which help people lose weight, but in nearly all cases the diets cannot be sustained and the weight returns after ending the diet.  In fact most people who attempt such diets end up heavier in the end.  This is all you can say about calories, and there’s nothing about this weight gain and loss that’s healthy.

Dangers of Non-Sugar Sweeteners

Alternative sweeteners like aspartame and HFCS have so many health concerns or suspected health concerns associated with them, that I’m not even going to get into it here.  I’ve written some posts about these, and you can find lots of other things by searching the Internet.

In particular both of these are suspected of being behind the current world wide obesity epidemic, and are both suspected or known carcinogens.

Age Limit for Buying Soft Drinks?

Not to be left out here are of course the tobacco and alcohol lobbies.

To begin with the tobacco lobby does not want any legal competition with their products.  This is the reason they were and are behind things like prohibition, worldwide drug wars and age limits that ensure young people grow up with a period of time where tobacco is the only legal drug available.  It’s pretty logical they would like to see sugar less available, because craving it could also make using tobacco more attractive.

More importantly the tobacco industry wants to see the culture of enforced age limits, as a way of making their products seem safer.  After all if we have age limits for everything from alcohol to tanning salons, and tobacco has a relatively low limit, it makes tobacco products seem safer and more normal to young people.  In fact there are few more lethal products worldwide than tobacco.

Alcohol follows closely behind tobacco, because if you’re addicted to tobacco, you’re much more likely to consume larger amounts of alcohol.

What is it about elections in the US that brings together such powerful political lobbies in such intrusive ways?

Alternatives?

How about some alternatives to a sugar tax:

Prohibition of soft drink and candy vending machines in schools, except for products containing 100% fruit, ordinary sugar, water or other completely natural ingredients.

Prohibition of sponsorship or promotion of processed foods, in a similar way promotion of tobacco products is prohibited in many places now.

Prohibition or tax on HFCS and aspartame.

A tax in the US on saturated fat, like in Denmark and Hungary.

End subsidies on corn, HFCS and ethanol.

A levy on brand name soft drinks, in a similar way brand name cigarettes are priced higher in the US.

Anyone have other suggestions?

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Is Pizza a Vegetable?

One of President Reagan’s claim to fame in the US was trying to declare tomato ketchup a vegetable for school lunches.  This would mean schools could serve hamburgers or fries, and as long as it came with ketchup it was a complete meal.

School children’s tastes have since evolved, and now pizza is the new hamburger.  With evolving foods comes the need to update laws.  In order to keep up with the times, the US congress declared pizza a vegetable because it has tomato paste on it.  This measure in congress was necessary in order to override the USDA’s advice to the contrary.

So what else comes with the tomato paste in school lunch pizza?  Courtesy of Kristin Wartman’s article on Grist, here’s a list of ingredients in ConAgra’s “traditional 4×6 school pizza”:

CRUST: (Enriched wheat flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean oil, dextrose, baking powder (sodium bicarbonate, sodium aluminum sulfate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate), yeasts (yeast, starch, sorbitan monostearate, ascorbic acid), salt, dough conditioners (wheat flour, salt, soy oil, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, fungal enzyme), wheat gluten, soy flour).

SAUCE: (water, tomato paste (31 percent NTSS), pizza seasoning (salt, sugar, spices, dehydrated onion, guar and xanthan gum, garlic powder, potassium sorbate, citric acid, tricalcium phophate and soybean oil (prevent caking)), modified food starch).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE: (Pasteurized part skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes).

SHREDDED MOZZARELLA CHEESE SUBSTITUTE: (Water, oil (soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with citric acid), casein, milk protein concentrate, modified food starch, contains 2 percent or less of the following: sodium aluminum phosphate, salt, lactic acid, mozzarella cheese type flavor (cheese (milk, culture, rennet, salt), milk solids, disodium phosphate), disodium phosphate, sorbic acid, nutrient blend (magnesium oxide, zinc oxide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin and vitamin B-12), vitamin A palmitate).

That looks like a vegetable to me!  It’s that ‘nutrient blend’ in the shredded mozzarella cheese substitute that makes all the difference.

Lizz Winstead at the Guardian also wrote a piece on this.

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Jamie Oliver TED Talk

While browsing Anne’s blog, I came across this great video of Jamie Oliver. I guess by now he’s someone pretty well known on both sides of the Atlantic. While I like Jamie a lot, there are clearly some points I disagree with him on, so I’m going to say something about these too.

To be honest, I have a problem with his strong imagery regarding sugar.

When it comes to processed foods containing sugar, and children especially consuming large quantities of this, there’s little to disagree with. Children don’t need sugar added to their milk to make it taste better, nor do they need artificial flavors and colors. In addition, there’s reason to be concerned about salt and fats in processed foods. While I say concerned, I want to be clear that moderation is key here, and those that have the most to worry about are people that eat only processed foods and little else.

There’s also little doubt that the healthiest food for anyone to eat is fresh, home cooked, locally produced and free of chemicals and pesticides. The healthiest diet is also one that emphasises fruits, vegetables and simple starches over animal products and other processed foods. This is particularly important for children.

On the other hand, sugar, salt and fats/oils are also perfectly normal cooking ingredients, that nearly all of us have in our kitchens. These are perfectly fine to use in cooking or to season your food. It’s absolutely crazy that some people think it’s unhealthy for the average person to add a spoonful of sugar to their tea or salt to their meal. If you’re diabetic, have high blood pressure or otherwise under doctors care, there may be some specific reason why you personally cannot eat certain things, but there’s no evidence to suggest it’s in any way unhealthy for the average person.

Many of us also eat modest amounts of processed foods containing these ingredients, like dairy, soft drinks, meats, and even things like soy sauce, catsup and so on. There’s little evidence to suggest there’s anything wrong with this. In fact there’s evidence to suggest that not only are these normal things to consume, they can also be healthy. There can however be many reasons for concern regarding how these foods are produced, and in general it’s becoming increasingly clear how important it is to think about this.

Food companies make huge profits by making people afraid of normal foods, and selling them supposedly healthy alternatives or by substituting something cheaper for these common ingredients.

Sugar is one of the most clear examples. In relative terms, sugar is expensive to add to processed foods. It’s price fluctuates on world markets, and supplies are not reliable. Soft drink companies have long sought alternatives to common sugars for their products. By using a sugar substitute, for example aspartame that’s commonly used in sugar free soft drinks, manufactures save an estimated 1.5 cents (US dollars) per can of beverage. This is a huge savings when considering how many cans of sugar free drinks are made each year. A similar savings can be had by using high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) instead of normal sugar, which is common in the US.

The problem is these sugar alternatives are linked to obesity, diabetes and other health problems. Statistically, people who drink soft drinks containing aspartame instead of sugar are heavier. In addition, the current obesity epidemic in the US corresponds almost exactly to the introduction of HFCS into processed foods and soft drinks.

There’s little evidence to show a connection between consuming modest amounts of ordinary sugar and weight gain. In fact, sugar is known to suppress appetite and many people who switch to sugar alternatives find themselves coping with a significant increase in hunger. Aspartame is a known appetite stimulant.

In simple terms, there’s little evidence to suggest an average adult without specific medical concerns is doing anything unhealthy by consuming modest amounts of fats, sugar or salt, as long as these come from natural sources. Specifically, there is no benefit in looking for alternatives to these foods. Certainly, no one should be afraid of these ingredients for use in home cooking.