Should Sugar Be Regulated? >
Sugars Have a Reasonable Place in Healthful Diets
Food manufacturers should be required to group all sugars under one designation
March 30, 2012
About Marion Nestle:
Marion Nestle is a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and co-author of Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics.
Sugars—plural to include all forms of caloric sweeteners--are not poison. Although they have calories but no nutrients, and are considered "empty," they do make foods taste good. Sugars have a reasonable place in healthful diets…in moderation, of course. I am in favor of two kinds of regulation: requiring food manufacturers (1) to disclose added sugars on nutrition facts panels and (2) to group all kinds of sugars under one designation--sugars. Food advocacy groups have tried for years to get the FDA to require labeling of added sugars. At the moment, food labels list total carbohydrates, and some list grams of sugars. But these do not distinguish the naturally occurring sugars in foods that are accompanied by vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from refined sugars added in processing. For example, the sugar content of a cereal like Raisin Bran is much higher than that of other sweetened cereals because raisins naturally contain sugars. But raisins also provide nutrients; their calories are anything but empty. In ingredient lists, manufacturers are permitted to mention as separate entities glucose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, fruit concentrate, and many other kinds of sugars. Listing them separately means that they appear further down on ingredient lists. Grouping them together would indicate to the public that the product contains sugar(s) as the first ingredient.
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- Other Arguments
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#110340
No — High sugar taxes are at best unsuccessful, and at worst economically and socially harmful
PATRICK BASHAM, Co-author of 'Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade'
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#28529
No — Waiting for sugar regulation will not solve the problem
KEITH T. AYOOB, Director of the Nutrition Clinic at the Rose F. Kennedy Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
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#39140
No — Freedom for taxpayers and consumers is the answer, not more taxes and regulations
ART CARDEN, Assistant Professor of Economics at Rhodes College.
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#48280
Yes — Legislators should make policy that allows the price of food to match up more closely with its actual health costs
KRISTINA LEWIS, Doctor and Researcher at the Obesity Prevention Program at Harvard Medical School
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#63980
Yes — Sugar needs to be regulated like other toxic and addictive substances
LAURA SCHMIDT, Professor of Health Policy at the University of California-San Francisco
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#73476
Yes — The time may have come for the FDA to gradually ratchet down the amount of sugar that pours into the food supply
MICHAEL JACOBSON, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest
