Sugar demons, sweet lobbies and taxes

Specific companies in the sugar business remain the big boys and girls of obfuscation in the world of nutrition science. In league with them are members of the nutrition fraternity such as exercise scientist Steven N. Blair, who find it reluctant on the padding of appropriate industry sponsorship to libel sugar and its role in causing obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

Strong patrons, in short, make for poor, or at the very least questionable research. In 2015,The New York Times found that Coca-Cola, the single dominant producer of sugary beverages, supplied millions in terms of funding to researchers to identify (or not, as the case was) links between sugar consumption and obesity. The focus there was to get more exercise and get over a near clinical obsession on the part of Americans to be weight-conscious.

Coca-Cola, ever mindful of sustaining its appeal, has adopted the similar health and exercise offensive in other markets. In 2016, it was revealed that $1.7 million was expended by the company on fitness groups and academics in Australia alone. Professor Tim Olds of the University of South Australia saw no problems in pocketing $400,000 from the company for an international study on obesity. "I think, frankly," he sneered, "this is old-style superannuated chardonnay socialism."

Those from the food industry continue to draw miffed distinctions between the effects of sugar, and the impacts of other behaviours. "There's no safe level of smoking," claimed Geoff Parker, CEO of the Australian Beverages Council, "and so we refute any sort of comparison between what's happening with reducing the prevalence of smoking with reducing the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages." No nanny-state will do for Parker – not even a health conscious one. The sugar demons still have the upper hand.