January 26, 2004
NEW YORK - Refined sugar is the world's most popular and widely used drug.
Webster's Dictionary defines a drug as a `chemical substance used to alter the state of body or mind.' We don't usually think of sugar and other favorite stimulants like coffee or tea as drugs, but they all have marked effects on the human body.
The UN's World Health Organization has launched an international campaign to cut consumption of refined sugar, which it says is the principal culprit in the current epidemic of obesity and its associated diseases, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Interestingly, the health food trade has been warning for over 30 years about the negative effects of refined sugar, calling it the `white death.'
Americans, who comprise only 5% of world population, account for a whopping 33% of total global sugar consumption, over 10 million tons annually.
According to the WHO, over half of Americans are overweight; 31% of them- 38.8 million people - are obese. Obesity rates in children have risen 50% in recent years.
Americans have become sugar junkies and, sad to say, a nation of fatties, the world's most overweight people. Europeans laugh at obese American tourists as they waddle down the street.
It's hard to find any processed food products these days without some form of added sugars: sucrose, dextrose, fructose, corn syrup, maltodextrin. A can of soda can easily contain eight teaspoons of refined sugar.
France and Australia have been forced to produce sweeter wines to cater to the sugar-craving US market. Carbohydrates, the basic material for all the breads, potatoes, cakes, and snack foods that American consume in huge quantities, are quickly converted by the body into simple sugar, and then stored as fat.
Incredibly, the Bush Administration is strongly opposing the WHO's campaign to limit sugar intake to 10% of total caloric consumption. George Bush seems to think lots of sugar is just dandy.
Critics of Bush see this as yet another example of the radical, far-right ideology of his administration, which seems never to have seen a tree it did not want to cut down, an animal it did not want to shoot, or a park it did not want to pave.
But there's much more here than just Cro-Magnon anti-environmentalism. The brilliant Republican strategist Kevin Phillips wrote in the `American Conservative' that his party has gone from being a small-government conservative movement to a collection of special interests feeding off and backing ever bigger government. Sugar is a prime example.
Even though Bush's home state of Texas has some of the highest obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rates in the US, the president and his men insist heavy sugar consumption does not cause disease.
The US Secretary of Health actually claims, in the face of a mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, that it's fine to get 25% of one's calories from refined sugar!
The real reason for the Bush Administration's preposterous position is that the powerful US sugar industry is one of its biggest financial backers, and a major power in the key electoral state of Florida. The sugar industry is also one of Washington's leading contributors to Congressmen and Senators of both parties.
The result: the Federal government subsidizes the US sugar producers to the tune of US $1.4 billion annually. Import restrictions protect them from foreign competition and keep domestic sugar prices 3-4 times higher than world prices. Sugar remains the nation's most heavily subsidized crop at almost $500 per acre per annum.
So American consumers pay inflated prices for sugar while tiny West Indian sugar-producing islands, that depend on the crop, are shut out of the US market. Worse, sugar cultivation has very damaging environmental effects. In Florida, 500,000 acres of the Everglades wetlands, one of America's natural treasures, have been destroyed to make room for growing sugar.
Joining the sugar industry in opposing the WHO campaign are the US's biggest food and drink producers, led by the mighty Coca-Cola Company, and sugar exporting nations.
Instead of setting a positive example for the rest of the world by nudging Americans to lower their sugar consumption, the Bush Administration seems to see UN efforts as some sort of nefarious foreign plot.
But action is urgently needed: the UN found that 60% of disease worldwide is now caused by cardiovascular ailments, which are directly linked to over-consumption of sugar, saturated and trans-fats, and increasing lack of exercise caused by too much TV viewing.
All developed nations face this problem to varying degrees. In the Middle East, Pakistan and India, over-consumption of fats and sugar are now the gravest public health problem after malnutrition. But no one wants to give up their beloved pastries, sweet tea or fatty mutton.
This column does not like government intervention in people's lives. Years ago, when the anti-smoking jihad began, I wrote that fatty burgers killed ten times more people than cigarettes and should logically just as well be banned.
But the sugar epidemic has become such a peril to public health that government should act. Not to confiscate sugar from people's homes, but to end sugar subsidies, ban all advertising of sugar-laden products to children, get soft drinks out of schools, and educate Americans about the perils of too much refined sugar.
Foreign Correspondent
