The David Gillespie Blog

Three years ago a Professor from Sydney University published a paper which she claimed exonerated sugar as a cause of obesity in Australia. It has been widely promoted by the processed food industry.  But from the very beginning it was obvious that there were serious problems with both the evidence relied upon and the conclusions reached. So far the University has failed to remove the paper and continues to drag its feet. Why?

In May 2010, the DAA (Dietitians Association of Australia) announced that Dr Alan Barclay, Head of Research at the Australian Diabetes Council had discovered that sugar could not be blamed for Australia’s obesity crisis.

‘Much to everyone’s surprise, it looks as if, unlike in the US, sugar is not the culprit here – or in the UK or Japan,’ said Dr Barclay while commenting on the study he had just completed with co-researcher Alicia Sims. He based this conclusion on his discovery that consumption of sugar had declined by ‘nearly 20 per cent’ since the early 1970s.

After this, the research was frequently wheeled out to rebut anyone who dared to suggest that sugar may indeed be the culprit. One example appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2010 when one of my books about the dangers of sugar was critiqued by Jennie Brand-Miller a professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney.

Brand-Miller argued that Australia’s consumption of sugar has ‘actually decreased by about 23 per cent over the past 30 years. That to me blows David Gillespie’s hypothesis out of the window,’ she said.

Brand-Miller was apparently so impressed by Barclay’s findings on sugar consumption that she became the lead author of the paper by the time it was eventually published in 2011.

The paper on Australia’s paradoxical decline in sugar consumption (paradoxical because elsewhere in the world sugar and obesity rise together but here apparently they don’t) finally saw the light of day in a little known online-only journal called nutrients. Brand-Miller was the guest editor for the issue in which the paper appeared.

As you might expect, those with a buck to make from flogging sugar have leapt upon the (now published) paper with glee.

When the AFGC (Australia’s peak processed food lobby group) argued against a change to the Healthy eating guidelines which would restrict sugar consumption, they relied on the paper. When Kellogg’s wants to convince us that the sugar content of Breakfast cereal is not a problem, they rely on the paper. When Pepsico, Coca-cola or the Australian Beverages Council want to convince us that sugar doesn’t cause diabetes or obesity they rely on the paper. And of course the US, Canadian and Australian sugar associations cite it regularly.

Perhaps a little more surprisingly both the DAA and the National Heart Foundation have, in the past, also relied heavily on the paper’s findings to combat any suggestion that sugar consumption is a serious cause for concern.

Very early on, the constant assertion of the existence of an Australian Sugar Paradox happened to catch the eye of a former Reserve Bank economist, Rory Robertson. He had spent most of his life studying economic data and charts – including on commodity consumption and production – and the statement that Australia is eating less sugar now than it did in the 1970s just didn’t ring true. He made a few calls and quickly discovered that some of the data used by the paper was, to put it bluntly, made up (by the FAO – the United Nations Food and Agriculture organisation). It seemed that was necessary because the Australian Bureau of Statistics no longer collected information about sugar consumption, but the FAO still needed to produce a sugar consumption report.

Alerted to the possibility that there were serious problems with the paper, Robertson dug further and began to discover glaring errors and other concerns. For example a graph which showed a 30% increase in sugary drink consumption was described by the authors as showing a 10% decline. And both Brand-Miller and Barclay had failed to mention that the ‘not for profit food endorsement program’ (disclosed in the paper), with which they are both involved, receives payments from CSR (a large retail sugar vendor) and other companies selling foods high in sugar.  I’m sure those payments didn’t influence Brand-Miller and Barclay’s research at all but the potential for conflict should have been disclosed.

Robertson raised his concerns with the authors and the journal to no avail. Frustrated by the refusal to acknowledge obvious errors, in March 2012, he contacted Sydney University’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research, Dr Jill Trewhella.  He was swiftly told that his complaints were ‘potentially defamatory’ and that the best avenue of redress was to publish a paper of his own.

Robertson decided instead to campaign to have the paper removed from the public record. His logic was simple. The paper may be error riddled and published in an obscure online-only journal but it punches way above its weight. It is used extensively to undermine any suggestion that sugar consumption is dangerous and it lends the hard won credibility of Sydney University (and the Diabetes Council of Australia) to its clearly inappropriate claims. He felt that simply rebutting it in a journal would not stop it doing harm. It needed to be expunged from the academic record.

Rory is nothing if not persistent. And it appears that Dr Trewhella is finally acting on his concerns. In November 2013, she announced that she had appointed an investigator to ‘conduct an initial inquiry’ the aim of which is to determine if ‘a prima facie case has been established’ in relation to Rory’s complaints.

But now more than 10 weeks have passed and there is still no word from Sydney University as to the outcome of its investigation. It shouldn’t be that hard. The Paradox paper contains obvious errors (such as the 10% increase debacle discussed above) which go to the core of its claim of decreasing sugar consumption. And at least one of those errors has been acknowledged as recently as last Sunday by Brand-Miller in response to questioning by ABC Background Briefing reporter Wendy Carlisle.

But something else makes the investigator’s task even easier. A peer reviewed paper has been published by the University of Western Australia which explicitly states that having analysed the paper and its conclusions, there is no Australian Paradox (because Australian sugar consumption is ‘substantially increasing’). It couldn’t be more black and white if it were a Zebra.

The Australian Paradox paper is, at best, incompetent. There is no justification for its continued existence. Every day that it remains on the public record, it is being used as ammunition by the processed food industry, Sydney University’s reputation as a premier university is being tarnished and the science of human nutrition is being ridiculed.

It’s time for the University to stop pussy-footing around and do what needs to be done. Retract the paper. Prolonging the embarrassment does not make it less embarrassing.

The 2014 Low Fructose Guide to Australian Breads lists the 10 best and 10 worst breads on sale in Australia today (from a sugar content perspective). It also contains a separate section for gluten and wheat free offerings and a comprehensive listing of the sugar content of over 220 supermarket breads and larger bakeries (such as Baker’s Delight).

Get yours today by visiting the Resource Store.

Last week the WHO (World Health Organization) leaked a draft report about sugar. The report will tell the world’s health authorities that they should be severely limiting the amount of sugar we all eat. It will recommend that we consume no more than 5 teaspoons of sugar a day. Given the average Australian is putting away somewhere closer to 35-45 teaspoons a day, it’s a very big call indeed.

The WHO is the health policy unit of the United Nations. Its aim is provide evidence based leadership on health research. It is well funded, free from corporate influence and motivated entirely by a desire to ensure that the 193 UN member countries get the best possible, evidence based, health advice. The WHO doesn’t run a Tick program or receive sponsorship from the processed food industry. Indeed it has even recently taken the extraordinary step of banning one ‘research’ group sponsored by industry from participating in its decision making processes.

Shrinath Reddy, a cardiologist and member of the WHO panel of experts, told the Sunday Times the WHO is moving on sugar because “There is overwhelming evidence coming out about sugar-sweetened beverages and other sugar consumption links to obesity, diabetes and even cardiovascular disease.”

The worldwide burden for those diseases is accelerating very quickly. According to a new report out this week the number of overweight and obese in the developing world has quadrupled since 1980.

A billion people in the developing world are now on the chronic disease express. But don’t worry, we still win. Less than a third of the population in China and India is overweight compared to our two thirds or more. They are just starting to get the hang of this Western Diet Thingy, so expect very big rises in the very near future.

The WHO have looked dispassionately at the evidence and have seen the tsunami of human misery caused by sugar coming for more than a decade They publicly warned that sugar was strongly implicated in obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension and heart disease in 2003.

They then took the extraordinary step of telling member governments that they should ensure their populations limited sugar consumption to a maximum of 10% of total calories (around 10 teaspoons of sugar a day – the same amount you would find in a Coke or a large Apple Juice). They did this despite an overt and vicious public campaign conducted by the Food industry.

The US sugar lobby demanded that the US Congress end its $406 million funding of the WHO. This is the same WHO that co-ordinates global action against epidemics like HIV, Bird Flu and SARS. But the US food industry wanted it destroyed because it dared to suggest we eat less sugar.

The lobbying behind the scenes was even more ruthless. Derek Yach, the WHO Executive Director who drove the sugar reduction policy work told a British documentary crew in 2004, that millions were spent trying to torpedo the policy. US Senators wrote directly to the WHO threatening its very existence. They also threatened the Food and Agriculture Organisation (a sister UN department concerned with food production) with a cut in funding.

In the end the food industry campaign paid off. The WHO removed its 10% recommendation from the final text of its recommendation. It was watered down to a suggestion that people ‘cut the amount of sugar in the diet’.

As one of the people involved at the time, Professor Phillip James, Chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce, predicted “we’ll end up with nice little policies telling [us] to have ‘just a bit less sugar and a little more balanced diet’ the nonsense that’s gone on since the Second World War during which time we’ve had this vast epidemic of heart disease, diabetes and obesity.”

Even the briefest glance at the official dietary guidance on sugar in Australia or the UK will tell you Professor James wasn’t too far from the mark with his prediction. Our guidelines are stuffed with words like ‘moderation’ and ‘balanced diet’ when it comes to sugar.

But the thing about evidence is, it doesn’t go away. And in the 10 years since the WHO last tried to save us from sugar, the evidence has become overwhelming (to quote Dr Reddy).

The WHO got a serious kicking when they tried to suggest a 10 teaspoon upper limit on sugar consumption, so you can imagine that the evidence they have reviewed must be truly overpowering to have them step up to the plate again. But this time they want the limit to be 5% (5 teaspoons) or less. I hope they’re wearing their flak jackets because I suspect a whole heap of blood money from the processed food industry is pouring into ‘lobbyists’ pockets as we speak.

The WHO is not running down sugar because it hates sugar farmers. It is not doing it because it likes getting mauled by the US Government (and its sponsors). It’s doing it because we will all suffer immensely if we don’t act on its advice.

I don’t know if the WHO can withstand the punishment they are about to receive. And I have no confidence that their recommended limit will make it through the firestorm of food industry sponsored ‘science’ which will suddenly surface. But I do know that when good people decide the evidence is so powerful that they should say it anyway, then the rest of us better be bloody listening.

http://vimeo.com/71478142

‘That Sugar Film’ is a feature documentary being made by Madman Entertainment and Old Mates Productions. It is a bold and colourful ride exploring all things sugar. We look at sugar’s prevalence in society and see if it is having any major effects on the mind and body.

As part of the film, our host and director, Damon Gameau, who has eaten little to no sugar in the past 2 years is putting himself through a ‘Super Size Me’ inspired adventure of consuming 40 teaspoons of sugar per day found in common food and drinks. This is only marginally above the average daily amount consumed by teenagers world wide.

He will be monitored by a team of doctors and scientists from Australia, New Zealand and the USA. He will also head out on an international journey and be joined by many familiar faces who are willing to look at sugar a little more closely.

While Damon is taking part in the experiment he will be keeping a daily diary of what items he has consumed to reach 40 teaspoons a day. Take note that there will be little consumption of perceived ‘junk’ food but rather he will be highlighting the hidden sugars that are found in many ‘healthy’ marketed products.

Directed by Damon Gameau

Produced by Rory Williamson and Nick Batzias

Last month Credit Suisse issued a blunt warning to the processed food industry in general and the beverage industry in particular. The gig is up. Well, they didn’t say that exactly, but there can be no other way to read their pragmatic financial assessment of the state of play in the sugar wars.

The processed food industry has done their best to muddy the waters on the science linking sugar to heart disease, obesity and type II diabetes, but it doesn’t fool the team of 20 financial analysts for one second. You see, financial folks don’t need to worry about the prevailing nutritional dogma or whether they will get the next research grant. All they worry about is money and whether their clients are making enough of the stuff.

They ask if it could possibly be coincidence that Mexico is the third largest consumer of sugary soft-drink and ranked second for obesity. They speculate that maybe, just maybe, the same coincidence could explain Italy at #35 for soft-drink and #25 for obesity. But they are convinced that coincidence can’t be further stretched to explain how in every US State, obesity levels correlate exactly with the total sugar consumed from soft-drink (it varies quite a bit because the denizens of richer states consumer more diet soda and aren’t quite as fat as those which inhabit the poorer states).

Realising that the proving anything in human nutrition is virtually impossible (especially when folks making billions out of sugar are funding a lot of it), the financial wingnuts decide to ask doctors what they think. This is a world first as far as I am aware. They actually asked the doctors treating these diseases at the coal-face what they reckon the cause is. And the results confirm that if sugar’s role in disease is a mere coincidence, it’s got the medicos fooled too.

Eighty Six per cent of EU doctors (and 98% of US doctors) are convinced that sugar makes us fat. Ninety two per cent are convinced it causes Type II diabetes (96% in the US). Four out of five doctors also believe that sugar is addictive. And that’s a bit of a shame because less than 40% of them say they have anything more than minimal training in nutrition. Since they are spectacularly unqualified to help, fully 90 per cent of EU doctors think the government should do something to reduce sugar consumption (but only half of them think it will).

Bringing all this back to money (as is their wont), the bean counters then tally up the winners and losers. They point out that, at $140 billion per annum, the cost of type II diabetes to the US health system is already more than $60 billion per annum higher than for tobacco related costs. Worse than that, it is growing at over $6 billion a year – and that’s just one consequence of sugar consumption. Credit Suisse estimate that up to 40% of the $1 trillion annual US health budget is now being gobbled up in sugar related chronic disease.

Even so, the Swiss number crunchers are fairly certain governments will do absolutely nothing to protect their citizens from the food industry. They point out that sugar is the second most lobbied commodity in the world (after oil). Just growing the stuff employs 350,000 people in Europe (and a further 15 million in China). To them it seems a safe bet that no politician will act to endanger those jobs, let alone the millions of jobs that depend on the down-the-line uses of sugar in soft drinks and processed food.

Unfortunately the victims (that would be us) seem to be getting wise to the link between sugar and disease. And this, Credit Suisse predicts, means that the processed food industry will soon need to ‘self-regulate’ if it is to avoid financial Armageddon (a drop in sales, that is).

In other words, we can expect to see Big Sugar start to behave a lot like Big Tobacco when the alarm bells started ringing about lung cancer. Any reader old enough to remember when the only thing that made a telephone portable was installing it in a car, will surely remember these gems from a forgotten age:

Nicotine is not addictive; the link between lung cancer and smoking is not proven; and the tobacco industry does not target children with its advertising.

They may even feel a nostalgic tear well up as Big Sugar dusts off Big Tobacco’s playbook with these little beauties:

Sugar is not addictive; the link between disease and sugar is not proven; and Big Sugar does not target children with its advertising.

And they’ll no doubt add those tactics to the already ubiquitous ‘blame the consumer’ (it’s all about personal responsibility you see) and ‘disrupt the regulators’ (make sure government committees are stacked with people with strong links to the food industry) which they have already begun to deploy.

Credit Suisse is rather more optimistic about self-regulation than am I. They imagine a future consisting of Big Sugar voluntarily removing sugar and then dancing into the sunset arm in arm with a thin and healthy consumer.

Solid science linking tobacco to lung cancer was first published in 1950. In 1994, the CEO’s of all the US tobacco companies were still testifying to congress that there wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t until 46 US States successfully bludgeoned them with overwhelming legal force in 1998 that they agreed to pay for some of the harm they cause. Even so the Tobacco companies remain extremely profitable businesses that continue to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions of addicts worldwide.

The science is now in on the links between sugar and chronic disease. Those diseases are crippling our health system and destroying the lives of billions of people. But if the tobacco precedent is anything to go by, nothing will be done about it until someone with very deep pockets takes up the fight. Got a minute Rupert?

Goodman Fielder have released their new 99% fat free mayonnaise just in time for the salad days of summer. The only problem is that it has more in common with a can of coke than mayonnaise. So why is allowed to be called mayonnaise and why does it have a Heart Foundation tick?

No one is sure who came up with the first recipe for mayonnaise. The Spanish reckon it came from Mahon in Spain and was nicked by the French in 1756. The French reckon they had it for ages before that. They say it was named after the Duke of Mayenne when he took the time to finish his chicken and mayo sanger before the Battle of Arques in 1589.

But wherever it came from there is general agreement on the recipe. You grab an egg yolk and whisk in olive oil. It’s a cool bit of chemistry for two such simple ingredients. The oil and the water in the yolk create an emulsion which is stabilised by the proteins and lecithin in the yolk. If you want to get all fancy you can drop in a bit of mustard or lemon juice to give it a sharper tang.

And that’s all there is to one of the yummiest and most widespread condiments in the world today. Except apparently if you are a food conglomerate trying to make a fat free mayo. Given that 80% of the product is fat (Olive Oil) this presents a wee problem. Don’t worry though, there is a solution, pack it with sugar instead.

Goodman Fielder’s new Praise Creamy Mayonnaise is 99% Fat Free. And while the label claims this is ‘Mayonnaise’, the ingredient list doesn’t look like anything the Duke of Mayenne was likely to be using. There is neither egg nor Olive Oil involved in its construction. Indeed the primary ingredient (besides water) is sugar. Here’s the full ingredient list (in descending order of use in the product):

Water (about 70%),

Sugar (26.8%),

Vinegar,

Thickener (1442),

Salt,

Vegetable Gums (415, 460, 466),

Lemon Juice,

Sunflower Oil (0.8%),

Spices,

Colour (171, Lutein),

Food acid (citric),

Flavour.

Based on the volumes of each ingredient used, this ‘mayonnaise’ is really just a sugar water emulsion flavoured with a bit of salt, vinegar and Sunflower Oil (0.8% of the total volume – there’s more lemon juice than oil in this baby).

Just for the kicks of it let’s compare the ingredients of the substance labelled as mayonnaise with coca-cola. Coke contains (in descending order)

Water [89%] (tick),

Sugar [10.6%] (tick – but only about a third as much)

Colour (Caramel 150d), (tick)

Food Acid (338), (tick)

Flavour, (tick)

Caffeine. (nup – none of that in the mayo-ish stuff, for now)

This white-sugar-syrup (I can’t bring myself to call it mayonnaise any longer) has almost 3 times the sugar content of coca-cola. But unlike coke, it is marketed as health food. It proudly bears an Australian Heart Foundation tick of approval. And that’s a bit odd. Because just last week the very same Foundation re-launched its campaign to ban sugary drinks in schools, hospitals and sports centres and heavily tax them everywhere else. But by now we’re used to this kind of cognitive dissonance (and casual disregard for our health) from the Heart Foundation.

Mayonnaise is a food consisting of fat and egg yolk. The similarity between that and what appears in this bottle of sugar-water begins and ends with the word mayonnaise on the label.  It is an appalling abuse of our trust that our labelling laws allow this kind of outright deceit.

If this sort of boondoggle were permitted elsewhere you would be buying petrol made from used chip fat and cotton shirts made of the floor sweepings at the local barber shop (or, heaven forbid, waxing parlour). That kind of carry-on would immediately land the vendor in court, but when it comes to what you shove in your gob apparently anything goes.

Since our food regulators obviously care naught for accuracy in labelling, this example suggests you need to exercise real caution if you plan to buy packaged food. Ignore the front of the pack and peer closely at the ingredient list (bring your good glasses) if you want to have any hope of knowing what’s in the ‘mayo’ you’re being sold.

Of course you could always just buy an egg and some olive oil and get on the end of a whisk for a few minutes. Then you’d know the full ingredient list and the sugar content would be exactly 0.