More Added Sugar Confusion

The last post I made here back in 2016 (just before my 2 year hiatus to finish grad school) was titled "Added Sugar, or Added Confusion?", and was an argument against the FDA's newly imposed changes to the 'Nutrition Facts' labels on foods in the United States.  The two major changes that have been made include increasing the overall size of the calories per serving, and the inclusion of a new line item disclosing the amount of 'added sugars' underneath the 'total sugars' listing.  As stated in the aforementioned post, there's nothing inherently bad about providing more information.  My concerns stemmed from the politics of the decision and the ambiguity of terms such as "added sugar".

Little to my surprise, those concerns have surfaced in my news feed in the form of an article over at The New Food Economy entitled, "The FDA's Great Maple Syrup Fiasco".  According to the article, the FDA recently made a decision to require that maple syrup products contain the 'added sugar' label, despite the fact that adding sugar to maple syrup is actually prohibited by federal law.  Clearly, this would not merely be confusing for consumers, but would actually be misleading (or not - depending on how you look at it - read the full article, and decide for yourself).

The confusion around how to properly label maple syrup stems from the FDA's lack of a clear definition of what exactly constitutes 'added sugar'.  From the article:

"Basically, FDA is trying to define added sugar as both sugar that has been added to your food and sugar that you might add to your food later—though at the moment you buy it, it hasn’t been added. When you look at a package of Rice Krispies Treats and read on the nutritional facts panel that a bar has 8 grams of total sugar including 8 grams of added sugar, you will conclude that 8 grams of sugar has been added to the product, and you will be correct. When you read that your maple syrup has 54 grams of sugar per 60 milliliters of syrup, including 54 grams of added sugar, you might reasonably conclude that 54 grams of sugar has been added to the syrup. And, of course, you’d be wrong."

The article goes on to explain that what the FDA's original intent appears to be was to help consumer identify "sneaky sugars", and in turn make smart decisions that prevent over-consumption.  Unfortunately, it is too subjective to define and label "sneaky sugars" and so the FDA was forced to work with what it had - namely, 'added sugars'.  To further illustrate the absurdities contained within the FDA's arbitrary definition of 'added sugars', the goes on to explain that:

"The federal standards of identity for jelly include added sugar. You can’t call a product jelly if it doesn’t have added sugar. So the sugar added to jelly doesn’t count as added sugar. Savor that for a moment: Jelly has to have added sugar, so it doesn’t have to declare any added sugar; maple syrup isn’t allowed to have added sugar, so it has to declare its entire content as added sugar."

So what's the takeaway here?  Simply put, the FDA's attempt to inform the public of what foods contain sneaky, excessive, added sugars is falling flat on its face.  It seems that money and time might have been better spent on actually educating the public on how to make informed decisions on their overall sugar consumption, rather than targeting a boogeyman buzzword.

California's Coffee Conundrum

I have a love-hate relationship with The Golden State.  On one hand, it is home to some of the most beautiful areas you can find in nature.  It is vast and interesting, with an abundance of gorgeous deserts, forests, beaches, and everything in between.  The city of Los Angeles is just plain cool and is a cultural circus worthy of a weekend visit from time to time.  But California is also home to some of the dumbest laws on the books, especially concerning public health.

One of those stupid laws in the news recently is commonly known as Proposition 65, and requires the labeling of anything accessible to the public that may contain even trace amounts of any of the 900+ chemicals on its master list.  If you have ever picked up a packaged food or supplement and saw a label warning you that the product in question contained chemicals known in the State of California to cause cancer or birth defects, then you have witnessed firsthand what Prop 65 created.  In recent news, a California court ruled that coffee be added to the portfolio of products that bear a carcinogen warning label, much to the chagrin of reasonable scientists and nutritionists.

What's wrong with the court's ruling - and Proposition 65 as a whole - is two-fold.  First, as many scientists and nutritionists have already shown numerous times, coffee does not cause cancer.  Although there is evidence that acrylamide may be carcinogenic (so far only to non-human animals, and only when exposed to large doses), and coffee does contain trace amounts of this chemical due to the process of roasting coffee beans, there is no substantial evidence that drinking coffee produces any increased risk of cancer.  Requiring a label that unnecessarily scares consumers away from something that is harmless, and may actually even have some health benefits to it, is nonsensical and only further empowers those on the fringes (see GMO labeling and laws in Europe for further examples).

Second, slapping a warning label on anything containing one of 900 different chemicals is onerous, excessive, and will only lead to people slowly becoming less and less sure of what is really harmful, and what is not.  When everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted. 

Warnings should be real.  They should inform individuals of an actual threat to their safety and an increased risk of harm.  The key word there is "increased".  We all deal with risk every day, but when we see a warning label on something, we understand that our chance of something bad happening to us will probably increase if we don't heed its advice.  However, as we become more and more inundated with warning labels it is likely that we will actually become less and less inclined to pay attention to them, especially when the labels themselves seem to become increasingly frivolous.

As for me, right now I am waiting for a scientific study that shows that Disneyland visitors actually are at an increased risk for cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm compared to non-Disneyland visitors.  Maybe then, I will change my mind about Proposition 65.  Until then, I will continue to drink my coffee and visit with Mickey whenever I can.

Sources:

Cancer warning labels on coffee? California ruling 'crazy', scientists say

Stop freaking out about acrylamide in your coffee

The Proposition 65 List | OEHHA