R: PHA-Exchange> Fizzy drinks and Health

[sunil.deepak at aifo.it]

I hope that the bosses from UNICEF, who decided to promote Mcdonalds for
their fund-raising campaigns are reading this report and have the good sense
to cancel that shameful alliance.

Sunil
Dr. Sunil Deepak, MSD
AIFO, Bologna, Italy 

> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: Maria Hamlin Zúniga [mailto:iphc at cisas.org.ni]
> Inviato: giovedì 20 febbraio 2003 8.45
> A: Pha-Exchange
> Oggetto: PHA-Exchange> Fizzy drinks and Health
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Article from the Guardian Weekly
> 
> 
> 
> Are fizzy drinks doing this to our children?
> 
> War is breaking out over junk food and sugary drinks. The World Health
> Organisation says they are making children obese. The hugely powerful
> multinationals involved say that's rubbish.  Sarah Boseley 
> investigates :
> Soft drinks, hard facts
> 
> 
> 
> There was a time when children drank water or milk. That has 
> gone as surely
> as short trousers for schoolboys and the rag and bone man's 
> horse and cart.
> Wherever today's kids hang out - be it in fast-food 
> restaurants, in cinemas,
> at home or at school - they are swigging cola and cans of 
> fruit-flavoured
> fizz. Last year more than 200 litres of the stuff bubbled 
> down each of their
> gullets. And they are getting alarmingly fat. Could these facts be
> connected?It is a suggestion that makes the soft drinks 
> industry (UK sales
> $13.8bn in 2001) incandescent with rage, but the Geneva-based 
> World Health
> Organisation (WHO) has for the first time nailed it to the agenda in a
> ground-breaking draft report on obesity and nutrition. The 
> report urges
> governments to clamp down on TV ads pushing "sugar-rich items" to
> impressionable thirsty youngsters and to consider slapping 
> heavier taxes on
> them. It suggests that school vending machines should be 
> turned into scrap
> metal.
> This is all-out war. The WHO, concerned about the rising tide 
> of obesity
> that is killing and debilitating millions in rich countries 
> such as the
> United States and Britain, and that is now edging into poor 
> countries to
> co-exist obscenely with malnutrition, means business. The soft drinks
> industry, appalled at this interference with its global 
> dominance, disputes
> not only the scientific evidence but the WHO's right even to 
> raise issues of
> taxes and advertising.
> For many years the food industry has fought a largely 
> successful battle to
> have us believe that couch potato culture is a bigger villain 
> even than
> high-fat chips, burgers and chocolate bars in the increasingly porcine
> appearance of British youth. Children have been denied school 
> playing fields
> and corralled in front of the TV, they argue. They have 
> exchanged running in
> the streets for passive internet roaming.
> But the WHO has now marched in where nanny once feared to 
> tread, insisting
> that slothfulness is not all, and asserting that food and 
> drink is an issue
> of public health - not just a matter for consumer choice. In 
> naming and
> shaming sugar as well as fat, it is taking on corporations 
> with more wealth,
> power and global reach than many small nations. The industry has gone
> ballistic.
> "We are going to see the most astonishing public fight," says 
> Tim Lang,
> professor of food policy at City University, London. "It is 
> going to be
> straightforward war." For years, he says, industry has been 
> successfully
> lobbying and operating behind the scenes to prevent the sort of
> confrontation that is now taking place. But the stratospheric surge in
> obesity, its first cousin diabetes and other 
> nutrition-related diseases has
> spurred the WHO to act.
> "If the WHO had not taken this on it would have been derelict in its
> duties," says Professor Lang. "It is taking on people who 
> have fought for
> 20-30 years denying the evidence  about the impact of diet on 
> degenerative
> diseases and food-related cancers. They have argued this is a 
> nonsense. They
> have hired rent-a-professors and argued that it wasn't true. 
> They have gone
> down the lobbying route. They have gone down, above all, an 
> ideological
> route, arguing that there are problems, but they are down to 
> an individual's
> mis-consumption."
> First strike has come from the US, where big business and the Bush
> administration meld indistinguishably into one and where, in 
> 1997, Americans
> spent more than $54bn on 53bn litres of soft drink. Babies 
> are weaned on
> soda pop - a fifth of one- and two-year-olds drink a cup a 
> day. The average
> teenage boy quaffs more than a can and a half daily. Some 12% 
> of boys and
> 11% of girls are obese. In the past 20 years obesity levels 
> in adolescents
> have tripled.
> The US government registered a formal objection to the WHO 
> draft report, arg
> uing that it had not proved its case. It said the report 
> found "insufficient
> evidence to conclude a causal link between soft drinks consumption and
> weight gain exists". It demanded that the offending words be 
> "deleted or
> significantly revised".
> This is curious, because - as Congressman Henry Waxman 
> pointed out - the
> review that led the WHO to its conclusion was co-authored by 
> William Dietz,
> director of the division of nutrition and physical activity 
> of the Centers
> for Disease Control and the US government's leading obesity 
> expert. Both Dr
> Dietz and the US surgeon general have praised schools that 
> ban soft drink
> machines - as has happened across Los Angeles county.
> The US government's response - and its lobbying of European Union
> governments to share its stance - is a powerful shot across 
> the WHO bows.
> But what many campaigners fear is not so much the public fracas as the
> subtler power play of covert influence behind the scenes. The 
> UN agencies,
> which have to listen to opinion from every quarter, are wide open to
> infiltration and manipulation. It happened when the WHO took 
> on the tobacco
> industry. An unpublished report obtained by the Guardian 
> suggests it has
> been happening with the food industry too.
> The report was compiled by a retired American public health 
> academic called
> Norbert Hirschhorn, who has written tomes on the secrets of  
> the tobacco
> industry after delving into the archives set up during the 
> litigation in the
> US. Those archives provided comprehensive evidence for a 
> report to the WHO
> director- general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, in July 2000 that 
> the tobacco
> companies had succeeded in infiltrating the WHO and were 
> exerting "undue
> influence" over its policies on cigarettes. Professor 
> Hirschhorn sought to
> discover whether similar tactics had been employed by sectors 
> of the food
> industry owned by or linked to tobacco.
> His unpublished report, dated June 19 last year, finds "that 'undue
> influence' has indeed been exerted by the tobacco industry, its food
> subsidiaries and allies" on food and nutrition policies. The 
> tactics, he
> says, were to position the industry's own toxicologists and 
> other experts
> on WHO and FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation) 
> committees and to fund
> and support non-governmental organisations that would put 
> forward their
> views. Funds were channelled through food companies to 
> research and policy
> groups sympathetic to industry. Libertarian think-tanks and 
> writers who
> would denounce over-regulation and champion individual choice 
> were given
> financial support.
> Prof Hirschhorn pays particular attention to an organisation 
> called the
> International Life Sciences Institute, which was founded in 1978 by
> Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, General Foods, Kraft (owned by Philip 
> Morris tobacco)
> and Procter & Gamble. Until 1991 it was led by Coca-Cola 
> vice-president
> Alex Malaspina, who negotiated for a position as an NGO "in official
> relations" with the WHO, and a  specialised consultative 
> status with the
> FAO. The environmental sciences division of ILSI worked 
> closely with the
> tobacco industry.
> The report states that after the FAO/WHO issued nutrition 
> guidelines in
> 1992, members congratulated themselves on steering the UN 
> organisations away
> from any curbs on sugar consumption, in line with the 
> position of the food
> industry.
> From the conference rooms of Geneva to the corridors of a 
> school near you,
> games of power and influence are being played out over what we eat and
> drink. Commercial interests are trying to influence both 
> policy makers and
> pupils, with varying degrees of subtlety. Vending machines 
> sell Coke and
> Tango, crisps and sweets in schools - a quick sugar fix for 
> hungry kids and
> cash for the head to buy more books. Food companies sponsor 
> educational
> worksheets and information booklets. Walker's salt and 
> fat-heavy crisps
> offer "books for schools" vouchers, and Nestle promises money 
> for schools
> that collect packet tops from sugar-loaded cereals.
> The UK Food Commission, which campaigns against these 
> promotions, says most
> British children consume more fat, sugar and salt than is 
> recommended for an
> adult, and around 9% of boys and 13.5% of girls in England 
> are overweight.
> In 10 years, from 1984 to 1994, obesity in primary 
> schoolchildren went up by
> 140%.
> Joe Harvey, director of the Health Education Trust, which 
> runs the Schools
> Nutrition Action Group, thinks UK schools are ill-equipped to 
> deal with the
> seductions offered by the food and drink industry and that 
> parents need
> help. "It is, I would have thought, something that the 
> Government should
> take on," he says. "It's absolute rubbish to say that 
> television ads don't
> impact on children. It's an onslaught. Look at the 
> advertising on Saturday
> morning. Tell me, is there any balance in that?" Where are 
> the fruit and
> vegetable ads, he asks.
> The British Soft Drinks Association could not agree less. 
> Richard Laming,
> public affairs manager, says advertising is good for 
> children. "Children
> have to grow up in the world as it is, and the world has 
> advertising in it.
> The research shows they know the difference between advertising and TV
> programmes. Where it is prohibited, the quality of children's 
> TV declines
> because the programme makers can't justify spending so much 
> money. So the
> overall impact is to harm children, not to protect them, 
> because it reduces
> the quality of children's television."
> The association, which represents the major soft drinks 
> players in the UK,
> also does not agree with the WHO take on nutrition, sugar and 
> corpulence.
> "The problem is sedentary lifestyles, and diet hasn't caught up - the
> crucial thing is to encourage more active lifestyles," says Laming.
> In spite of this apparent stone wall, Derek Yach, head of 
> non-communicable
> diseases for the WHO, which includes both obesity and 
> tobacco, says he is
> optimistic. "The interaction with the industry is extremely 
> dynamic," he
> says. The response at first was hostile, but "we have started 
> talking to all
> the major multinational companies involved, and we believe there is a
> serious spirit of trying to work with WHO. It is still very 
> early days, but
> I would anticipate that what we are going to see is stronger 
> competition
> among the companies to try to use health as an added lever to 
> sell their
> products."
>    UK
> • 21% of 7-10 year olds drink nearly 10 cans of fizzy 
> drink a week -
> eight cans being bought for them by their parents; 75% are 
> consumed at home.
> • 9% of boys and 13.5% of girls are overweight in 
> England. Obesity has
> been linked to the first cases of Type 2 diabetes noted among 
> UK teenagers.
> • British and American children are exposed to around 10 food
> commercials for every hour that they watch TV.
>   US
> • The department of agriculture recommends consuming no 
> more than 40gm
> of refined sugar a day, the equivalent of one can of fizzy 
> drink, which can
> contain up to 11 teaspoons of sugar.
> • 25% of the average American overall sugar consumption 
> comes from soft
> drinks.
> • Two-thirds of US adolescents drink soft drinks daily. 
> Profits from
> the sales of carbonated drinks are estimated at  an average 
> $39,000 for
> every high school every year. The sale of soft drinks is to 
> be banned in LA
> schools by January 2004.
> • A quarter of American children are overweight, with 
> 12% of boys and
> 11% of girls classed as obese. It is claimed that carbonated 
> drinks could
> account for 9% of boys' daily calorie intake and 8% of girls'.
>  <I> Catherine Lofthouse</I>
> 
> The Guardian Weekly 20-3-0123, page 22
> 
> 
> 
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