In the opening chapter of our Sugar Saga series, we took a look at the role a US sugar industry body – then known as the Sugar Research Foundation, played in the mid- to late 20th century in the promotion of sugar, by funding studies and advertising campaigns that would cast sugar in a favourable light.
Their actions would go on to influence public policy in their favour, encourage manufacturers to put more sugar in their products, and as stated by their president, Dr Henry Bohn Hass, a specialist in organic chemistry, in 1954, make sure that “people who never had a course in biochemistry are going to learn that sugar is what keeps every human being alive and with energy to face our daily problems”.
Lee Randall theconversation.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theconversation.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Technical Lead, Ghana Private Sector Engagement (Health Services) reliefweb.int - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from reliefweb.int Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
We’re eating and drinking ourselves into an early grave and Big Food has laid the blame for far too long on the consumer, by spinning the yarn that our “sweet tooth” and “lifestyle diseases” are our own doing.
This, despite the fact that our broken food system makes ultra-processed food as “cheap as chips”, at a time when non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease place Covid-19 patients at a significant risk of hospitalisation and death.
Over the past few decades, as multinational food companies started losing out on market share in the West, they turned their attention on the “growth market” of poor consumers in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, the continent has witnessed a surge in consumption of ultra-processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) – alongside an attendant spike in NCDs.