Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Malhotra, Schofield, Lustig: overcoming opposition from vested interests

It's worth noting that the co-authors of this report are from all over the world: Malhotra is from the UK, Schofield from New Zealand and Lustig in the States. The circumstances in each part of the world are all slightly different from each other when it comes to what drives their list of recommendations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Levac

Agree with first part, disagree with second part. A "better understanding" doesn't come from using a vague unit of measure like a teaspoon, but by using a standard unit of measure like the gram. This also applies to "% of daily requirement", which also appears right next to the Xg number for added sugars on the nutritional label, as if somehow added sugars was a nutrient and had a daily requirement, which is absurd, if we accept the first part of that suggestion above.

The nutritional label itself must be changed or replaced with something more accurate and more representative of what's in the box.

In NZ and the UK, nutrition labels already include a "per 100g" column, which the States lacks. So that would be an obvious improvement in transparency just by introducing that there. The teaspoon idea comes from the Public Health Collaboration in the UK.

Here in NZ, we have another front-of-packaging labelling system called the Healthy Star Rating, where the label on the back is basically condensed to a 1-5 star number indicating the product's supposed overall healthiness. Problem with this of course, is that the formula is based on standard guideline recommendations, so something like a bottle of cream gets 1 star because of the saturated fat, while many brands of grain-based cereal get 4+ stars.

So I personally support the teaspoons of sugar idea as not just a way to reinforce the particular issue with sugar to the general public, but here it would also presumably replace the HSRs as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Levac

That's it that's all. Nothing else need be done really. Do this for all crops, not just sugar. Let actual production costs influence retail price, to in turn influence consumption. Before industry, that was the single most effective means to influence consumption of anything. The greater the production cost, the lower the consumption. With industry, it retains its effectiveness due to incentive for profit by carrying production costs to retail.

Again, the situation with food subsidies varies depending on where you are in the world. It's not a problem here in NZ, we abolished them in 1984 (unless anything has since been re-introduced that I'm not aware of). But certainly I agree that it's a massive issue in the US which would be quite the hurdle to overcome one day.