When the Sugar Industry Went to Washington
In 2003, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization prepared a report recommending that free sugars provide less than 10 percent of a person’s total calories.
Free sugars include sugars added to foods and drinks, along with sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices, and fruit-juice concentrates. They do not include the sugars naturally contained within whole fruits and vegetables.
The Sugar Industry Responded
The U.S. Sugar Association strongly challenged the recommendation. It questioned the scientific evidence and threatened to ask Congress to reconsider the United States’ funding of the World Health Organization unless the recommendation was withdrawn.
The Sugar Association and other food-industry organizations also appealed to the U.S. government for help opposing the recommendation. The dispute became an unusually clear example of an industry attempting to use political and financial pressure against an international public-health recommendation.
Despite the opposition, WHO published the report.
Contemporary Reports
Read “Sugar Industry Sour on WHO Report”—free full text
The International Life Sciences Institute
The International Life Sciences Institute, commonly called ILSI, was founded in 1978 by Coca-Cola executive Alex Malaspina. It was supported for decades by major food, beverage, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies while presenting itself as a scientific nonprofit organization.
Researchers and public-health advocates have examined how corporations worked through ILSI to participate in nutrition research and policy discussions. The concern was not simply that companies funded individual studies, but that industry-supported organizations could help shape which questions were studied, how health problems were described, and which policy solutions received attention.
WHO’s Current Sugar Recommendation
WHO continues to recommend that adults and children obtain less than 10 percent of their total calories from free sugars. It suggests that reducing free sugars to less than 5 percent may provide additional health benefits.