The Food Pyramid Scheme

NY Times
September 1, 2004

If your mother ever told you that eating sweets would spoil your
dinner, she was right. The government should heed her wisdom - and pay
less attention to the sugar lobby - when it issues revamped nutrition
guidelines next year. The preponderance of scientific evidence, much
of it cited in a report issued last week by the advisory committee on
the new guidelines, shows that the more sugar you
consume, generally in the form of "added" sugars like high-fructose
corn syrup, the less likely you are to eat adequate amounts of
nutritious food. The report also persuasively connects obesity to
sugar, especially sugar-sweetened beverages.

And yet, when the 13 doctors and professors on the panel distilled the
evidence into nine tips for healthy eating, they didn't mention sugar.
Instead, they proposed a guideline that reads, unhelpfully, "Choose
carbohydrates wisely for good health."

To achieve this level of obscurity, the committee in effect had to
break with five sets of guidelines, dating to 1980, that addressed the
sugar issue with direct injunctions like "Avoid too much sugar."

This curious avoidance of the growing evidence about the dangers of
added sugar would be inexplicable but for the fact that seven members
of the panel - which was chosen by the Health and Human Services
Department - have major financial and organizational connections to
the food, drug and dietary supplement industries. It strains the
imagination to believe that the sugar industry did not have undue
influence this time around.

The government will collect public comments on the panel's
recommendations until September 27, 2004. Public health advocates are
generally satisfied with its other recommendations, which encourage,
for example, eating more vegetables. But it's crucial that unambiguous
advice about sugar consumption be in the final guidelines in early
2005.

The guidelines shape many decisions on such things as the content of
school lunch programs, food labeling and government dietary education.
The government's food-guide pyramid must also conform to the
guidelines.

More important, with obesity an epidemic, the public desperately needs
authoritative advice. The government could restore some of the
credibility it lost when it selected panel members with ties to
industry, and fulfill its mission to promote health - not the sugar
lobby - by rewriting the advice on sugar. How about this: "Reduce
added sugars."