In new research UCS released this week, an analysis of comments submitted to the FDA on its proposed rule to label added sugar shows a stark difference between supporters and opponents. Comments supporting the proposed rule—a majority of the total comments—came from public health experts and public interest advocates. Comments opposing the proposed rule overwhelmingly came from the food industry.
While not entirely surprising on its own (we’ve written about it here — and here and here and here and here and here), food industry denial of the science on added sugar stands out starkly in comments to the FDA from major companies and their trade groups. The Grocery Manufacturers Association said, for example, “there is scant evidence to support the idea that added sugar contributes to ill health” and therefore “providing this information in a nutrition label will not help aid consumers in maintaining a healthy diet.”
What is an ordinary person to do when both the food industry disagrees with independent scientists and public health experts so much yet both claim to have the facts on their side? The key is understanding motivations.
The First Line of Food Industry Defense
Perhaps the food industry believes that if they deny the science on added sugars often enough, loud enough, and to the right people—policymakers with the power to change labels and make dietary recommendations to the public—it will just go away.
The same trend we found in comments to the FDA appeared in food industry comments to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as these experts reviewed the evidence—and in comments on the DGAC’s final report to the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, in which the committee found moderate to strong evidence of a link between excessive added sugar consumption and a host of health problems, from type 2 diabetes to heart disease.
Laugh as we may, this tactic has worked in the past for Big Tobacco and for the Merchants of Doubt hawking climate change skepticism for fossil fuel interests. Following the close of the public comment period on the DGAC report on May 8 (Submit your comments today!), the USDA and HHS will develop the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a document that will inform what Americans eat for the next five years.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and author of Food Politics, whom we spoke with about corporate interference in food policy, said, “Attacking the science is the first line of industry defense against recommendations that suggest eating less of their products. Food companies are following the lead of cigarette companies in that regard.”
Calling Something a Fact Doesn’t Make It One
The flip side of denying facts is claiming things to be facts that are not facts. This seems to be the latest trick the food industry is playing. In the website snippet below, the American Beverage Association, a trade group that represents companies like Coca Cola and PepsiCo, says on a page claiming to provide “the facts on added sugars labeling” that “sugar is sugar, regardless of its source.”
The science says otherwise.
Other trade groups, like the International Food Information Council tout their own “research” that finds, of course, that labeling added sugar is misleading and confusing because the public doesn’t know how to read food labels. Yet along with the independent experts serving on the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, preeminent public health organizations, such as the American Heart Association, support limiting and labeling added sugar. How does the average person make sense of this disagreement over evidence and policy?
Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist, expert on the science of sugar, and author of the bestselling book Fat Chance, explained it to us succinctly when we spoke with him by phone. “The only ones opposed to limiting and labeling added sugar,” he said, “are the ones putting it in our food.”