Come, Sweet Death

"Come, Sweet Death" is the title of the Austrian murder mystery I finished reading last night. It is also an apropros headline to introduce two unrelated news stories about an excess of sugar in the American diet.

By way of David Halliday:

Corn syrup and other refined foods may be much to blame for the huge increase in type-2 diabetes in the United States over the past few decades, U.S. researchers said on Thursday

And on NPR this morning:

The World Health Organization is targeting sugary, fatty, salty and processed foods as the culprits behind the global obesity epidemic. The food and beverage industry is on the defense.

Listen as Sugar Association CEO Andrew Briscoe bemoans the recommendation to reduce the proportion of daily caloric intake from added sugars:

In the United States our average consumption figure is 15.7%... if we were to implement the figure of 10% we would be asking Americans to reduce their sugar intake by roughly 30% and there's not a scientific justification for that type of restriction.

Just like there's no scientific justification for the link between smoking and cancer. And presumably Andrew Briscoe can give us a scientific justification for the billions of dollars sucked out of the productive economy in the form of subsidies for the American sugar industry.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 26, 2004 02:17 PM