The American Sugar industry has launched a ferocious attack on the WHO, for reporting that sugar should only take up a maximum of 10 per cent in our diets. They say the figure should be closer to a maximum of 25 per cent (!).
They have threatened to influence funding cuts for the Geneva-based organisation, claiming that the report, written by a group of 30 independent experts based on 23 national reports, is ‘unscientific’.
Read the full story in The Guardian or The Sydney Morning Herald, which voices an opinion from the Australian health ministry.
I’ve just located the WHO report in question, ‘Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases‘ (PDF, 395 kb).
And to answer claims from a previous pro-sugar campaign (involving 40 ambassadors) citing that health reports would damage the economies of developing nations, read how US trade policy favours only a few farmers anyway, leaving many third world countries out in the cold (PDF, 81 kb).
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Looks like the industry wins again. The final report was due to appear on the WHO website yesterday, however you can only find the March preliminary report on an older article.
Nice!