Nobody is sweet on sugar anymore. Influential nutrition advocates have called it Public Enemy No. 1, the ISIS of public health, lurking even in innocent-looking salad dressings and peanut butter.
Last November an additional five U.S. cities implemented taxes on sugar-sweetened sodas. And to create an inviting new target, the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee identified sweets and snacks as the largest contributor of added sugars.
Few dispute that too much sugar is bad for you. But as the war against it escalates and more food and beverage products are under siege, it’s a good time to examine what works and what doesn’t work in getting these industries to sell healthier products. To make a big dent in obesity, food and beverage companies and their opponents must shift their spending away from attacking each other and adopt a new playbook for engagement, one in which industry recognizes activists’ assaults as reflections of changing consumer attitudes and harbingers of new growth opportunities, and where vocal advocates use corporate performance metrics to motivate change.
Instead, the warring parties continue to skirmish according to the old model, with one side spending big on trying to get regulations enacted and the other throwing dollars at trying to avoid them. Several prominent public health organizations have pledged to spend an estimated $825 million over the next 10 years to promote sugar taxes, ban junk food advertising, change package labels, and do research related to healthier eating and food industry practices. Since 2009 beverage companies alone have spent approximately $200 million to protect their sugary signature products federally and locally. As threats of additional taxation loom, millions more are likely to be spent. But these investments only fatten the wallets of lobbyists and advertising agencies; they have not made Americans any thinner. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an alarming 37% of Americans are obese, with half of the 50 states exhibiting obesity rates exceeding 30%.
Source: www.forbes.com