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Old Fri, May-11-18, 16:48
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Default Malhotra, Schofield, Lustig: overcoming opposition from vested interests

A new report appeared on my Facebook feed this morning from Aseem Malhotra, Grant Schofield and Robert Lustig:

The science against sugar, alone, is insufficient in tackling the obesity and type 2 diabetes crises – We must also overcome opposition from vested interests

It's a six page PDF so I won't cut and paste it all here, but much of it reads so similar to what I researched myself earlier in the year that it's kinda scary, but in the best possible way. Particularly their recommendations:
Quote:
We offer the following public health interventions to reduce sugar consumption, all of which are evidence-based and all of which were successful in curbing tobacco use. This suite of recommendations reflects an evidence-based, broad, socio-ecological approach to creating environments which help move society in the direction of food environments where sugar is no longer ubiquitous:

1. Education for the public should emphasise that there is no biological need or nutritional value of added sugar. Industry should be forced to label added and free sugars on food products in teaspoons rather than grams, which
will make it easier to understand.

2. There should be a complete ban of companies associated with sugary products from sponsoring sporting events. We encourage celebrities in the entertainment industry and sporting role models (as Indian cricketer Virat Kohli and American basketballer Stephan Curry have already done) to publicly dissociate themselves from sugary product endorsement.

3. We call for a ban on loss leading in supermarkets and running end-of-aisle loss leading on sugary and junk foods and drinks.

4. Sugary drinks taxes should extend to sugary foods as well.

5. We call for a complete ban of all sugary drink advertising (including fruit juice) on TV and internet demand services.

6. We recommend the discontinuing of all governmental food subsidies, especially commodity crops such as sugar, which contribute to health detriments. These subsidies distort the market and increase the costs of non-subsidised crops, making them unaffordable for many. No industry should be provided a subsidy for hurting people.

7. Policy should prevent all dietetic organisations from accepting money or endorsing companies that market processed foods. If they do, they cannot be allowed to claim that their dietary advice is independent.

8. We recommend splitting healthy eating and physical activity as separate and independent public health goals. We strongly recommend avoiding sedentary lifestyles through promotion of physical activity to prevent chronic disease for all ages and sizes, because ‘you can’t outrun a bad diet’. However, physical (in)activity is often conflated as an alternative solution to obesity on a simple energy in-and-out equation. The evidence for this approach is weak. This approach necessarily ignores the metabolic complexity and unnecessarily pitches two independently healthy behaviours against each other on just one poor health outcome (obesity). The issue of relieving the burden of nutrition-related disease needs to improve diet, not physical activity.
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