Health officials push FDA for sugar limits

A group of health advocates and public health officials from major cities around the country are asking the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of caloric sweeteners in sodas and other beverages, arguing that the scientific consensus is that the level of added sugars in those products is unsafe.
The group, led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and including public health departments from Boston to Los Angeles, said that the F.D.A. pledged in 1982 and 1988 to reassess the safety of sweeteners if consumption increased or if new scientific research indicated that ingredients like high fructose corn syrup and sucrose were a public health hazard.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Michael F. Jacobson, the center’s executive director, said both conditions had been met and thus the F.D.A. was “obligated” to act.

The center has asked the F.D.A. to set a safe limit for caloric sweeteners in beverages because they are the biggest source of sugars in the American diet.

“Just to assure you that sugars are not toxins, I use a teaspoon of sugar in my tea every day and I’m sure it’s not poison,” Dr. Jacobson said. “It’s the overconsumption that is par for the course in the U.S. that we’re concerned about.”

The center is also asking the agency to set voluntary limits on sweeteners in packaged goods, like cereals and snacks, and to mount an educational campaign to help consumers reduce added sugars in their diet.

“This is on solid legal ground,” Dr. Jacobson said. “It’s just a question of whether the F.D.A. will act or what it will take to get the F.D.A. to act.”

Public health officials in the cities that signed the petition said they did so out of concerns that obesity was contributing to rising rates of health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes and even gout, all of which are increasing among the populations they serve.

“We recognize that sugar-sweetened beverages are an issue, particularly when we’re talking about obesity in children,” said Sue Beatty, health education manager for the city of El Paso. “Anything that can be done to reduce the consumption of sugared sodas would improve the health of our population.”

Lora Lacey-Haun, co-chair of the Kansas City Health Commission and dean of the school of nursing at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, said about 30 percent of the city’s population was overweight and another 30 percent was obese. “We felt it was very important for us to make a statement that the F.D.A. should be making policy about what the appropriate level of sugar consumption is,” she said.

A typical 20-ounce bottle of soda contains an amount of high fructose corn syrup equivalent to roughly 16 teaspoons of sugar. The American Heart Association recommends that women consume no more than six teaspoons and men no more than nine teaspoons of added sugar a day.

Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said consigning the issue to personal responsibility informed by education has so far made little headway in helping Americans understand how much sugar is in sodas. “You would not sit down and eat 16 teaspoons of sugar, but when it’s in a drink, it just doesn’t register because it’s dissolved and you can’t see it,” she said. “I think something more is needed.”

The big beverage makers are aware of the growing pressure to either reduce the amount of sweeteners in their products or find an alternative to such sugars. PepsiCo, for example, has used stevia in a product called Trop50 to reduce calories in juice, while Coca-Cola recently went on the offensive with advertisements that sought to underscore its concern about obesity.

“There’s an important conversation going on about obesity, and we want to be part of the solution,” Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola’s chief executive said on Tuesday in a call with analysts to discuss the company’s earnings.

The American Beverage Association, which has started a program to label vending machines with calorie count information, issued a statement saying that the average number of calories in a beverage serving is down 23 percent since 1998, largely because of increasing sales of bottled waters and other low-calorie and no-calorie drinks.

It also cited data from a study of the 2007-8 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that found Americans were consuming 37 percent fewer calories from sugars in soft drinks and other sweetened beverages than they were in 2000.

“We ask: how can soft drinks be the leading contributor to obesity if calories consumed from soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages are down while at the same time obesity rates continue to rise?” the association said.

Dr. Jacobson said the advance of obesity has stopped. “They are trying to prove things are moving in the right direction and that they’ve contributed to that, and I think they are, though not to the extent they’re suggesting,” he said of the association. “Obesity in fact seems to have leveled off and I think that’s because of the decline in sugary soft drink consumption.”

Dr. Jacobson said that non-naturally occurring sugars add 300 to 400 calories, a little less than half of which come from sweetened beverages, to the average consumer’s daily caloric intake.

“If one were trying to ensure high rates of obesity, diabetes or heart disease in a population, one would feed the population large doses of sugary drinks,” Walter Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a statement. “The evidence is so strong that it is essential that the F.D.A. use its authority to make sugary drinks safer.”