by James Walvin
Predictably, poor countries were overwhelmed by European and US produce. Moreover, that produce had been greatly helped by subsidies. Recent analysis of subsidies has confirmed that in both the USA and in Europe, the bulk of such subsidies go to major corporations, a process that has been dubbed ‘corporate welfare’. Moreover, the largest recipients of European subsidies, as reported in 2009 (from evidence unearthed by the Freedom of Information Act) were the major transnational sugar companies. Sugar, along with other crops produced by the major corporations, was being procured at guaranteed prices for a specific period of time.9 By this method, cheap, subsidised sugar passed into the diet of untold millions. In the USA itself, sugar had long been a highly protected and subsidised industry. The Wall Street Journal claimed, in 2015, that the absurdity ‘of the federal sugar program is legendary’. The US tax system saw to it that sugar producers were guaranteed profits, whatever the market conditions.10
By the early twenty-first century, however, the era of such subsidies was drawing to a close. In many respects, it was too late – the damage had been done. Millions of people had already been weaned on food and drink that was harmful to their health. The greatest obstacle to changing the system, however, is the global power of multinational corporations, which effectively control the world’s food supplies. Which single nation state – including the USA – can bring to heel corporations who owe no loyalty to any particular state, and who wield unprecedented power? They are organisations who can simply move their money and their plant elsewhere, and adapt their systems using cheaper labour in alternative locations. What had happened to the world’s food is that it had become global – a particular but central example of the broader phenomenon of globalisation – owing no obligation to any government or people.
Who can resist the decisions and blandishments of such fabulous wealth and power, or tell the owners and managers of such corporate fortunes what they should or should not do? Moreover, for these companies, the arithmetic is simple – foodstuffs now deemed unhealthy are highly profitable, whereas wholesome, healthy foods are much less so. Wholesome foods yield profits of 3–6 per cent; highly processed foods 15 per cent.11 Which corporation Chair or Board is about to propose reversing the order to its shareholders? The end result is a global problem. In the words of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on food, ‘Our food systems are making people sick.’12 They are also making them increasingly fatter.
The underlying factor behind this extraordinary problem was the nature of the food and drink disgorged by the major food industries. What people eat and drink had been utterly transformed in little more than fifty years, by corporations that controlled agriculture, food processing and even food retailing. And at the heart of these global changes in food and drink lay the question of sugar.
The origins of the European processed-food industries can be traced back to the 1860s.13 Before then, food and drink traders were largely locally and regionally based. All began to change with the advance of modern industry. By the 1870s, for example, the availability of artificial ice made possible the longdistance transport of fresh fish, although from the 1920s fish was also cheaply available in tins; thereafter, tinned salmon became a household favourite. New metal steam-powered mills were introduced to grind American wheat which was harder than European varieties and had been imported from the vast farmlands of North America.
By 1945, all this had fallen into the hands of large-scale industrial enterprises. Even the bread made from that wheat was increasingly produced in factories. Evaporated milk, with large amounts of sugar added, became another popular item in poorer homes because of its taste and the fact that it was long-lasting. Yet the diet of poor people remained rooted in the old staples – all made palatable by the addition of sugar, which itself now passed through modernized, dockside refineries. In the form of jams and syrups, sugar continued to prove its value to low-income groups across Europe.
Such changes were a mere prelude to the intensive industrialisation of food after the Second World War. This was largely a technological revolution, brought about by scientists and nutritional research conducted both by the major food industries in their own laboratories and in university research labs. As food and drink became ever more industrialised and scientifically rooted, the food markets themselves changed – large-scale markets, swift transport systems and storage, all became integral features of the new food industries.
The end results were sometimes hard to recognize as food ‘pink slime’ and ‘meat slurry’ – both meat products – being perhaps the most repugnant. Yet both were sold to the public as ‘hamburgers’. ‘Turkey Twizzlers’ and other similarly bizarre inventions were the extreme offspring of the industrialisation of food. Indeed, a large number of meat products had the actual meat content reduced by processes of separation, spinning, boiling and freezing, before being bulked out with water, flavourings and colourings. Here, again, sugar was important as an additive.14 Even today’s ingredients lists on lower-value packages of ham, turkey, hamburgers, sausage and other cold meats make interesting reading.
* * *
This extraordinary upheaval in global dietary habits was not an accidental by-product. It was cleverly devised and executed by companies that had learned how to exploit human needs and responses – and to play to them via a scientifically and commercially inspired use of sugar as a critical ingredient.
We need only examine the daily cycle of meals and eating to sense the impact of sugar on our lives. Even before vast numbers of people step from their homes in the morning, their sugar intake has begun its impact on their bodies. The day often begins with breakfast cereals, many of which arrive at the table with a heavy dose of sugar, or sugar is added to the bowlful. Toast, muffins and other breads – or pancakes, in the USA – contain their own helping of sugar. Even the morning fruit juice may have been sweetened for them. Tea or coffee is often taken with sugar to taste.
There might be a number of mid-morning, sugar-laden biscuits, pastries, cakes or snacks to keep energy levels – and enjoyment – at their peak, and then lunchtime continues a similar pattern. Sugar is not only consumed via the obvious sweet foodstuffs – fast foods, above all, and yogurts, for example – but even in foods which suggest a healthier option, such as salad dressing, for instance. Sugar is even present in savouries that, again, might not seem sugary when tasted – sauces with pasta, ketchups, bacon, processed meat products, hams and other cured meats, with the accompanying rolls and bread. Unless we ask for tap water, even the bottled drinks we might choose to drink during the day contain their own additives in the form of syrups, sugar, fruit concentrates or synthetic sweeteners. Anyone choosing a dessert is bound to be offered artificially sweetened foods in a variety of forms, and these foods tend to be much sweeter in the USA than in Europe. An evening meal, at home or dining out, is similarly likely to be infused with the same sweet additives, especially if that meal is a takeaway dish, or pre-cooked, chilled or frozen and is simply reheated in a microwave.
Clearly, large numbers of people do not eat like this; but hundreds of millions do. Moreover, even people who seek to avoid food with added sugar have to make a special effort when shopping; they need to be vigilant about what they purchase, and carefully read labels on bottles, packages and bags. Even so, reading the label is sometimes not enough to avoid sugar, because the contents often come in a format incomprehensible to anyone but a chemist. It was no accident that the food industry put up a rearguard fight against the demands to oblige them to describe in intimate detail the content of the foods they manufactured. They knew that what they would reveal might act as a warning bell to more careful shoppers.
Sugar, then, is a regular companion to processed foods, but it operates in a very different fashion from sugar in natural foodstuffs. While a banana might contain 16g of sugar, a chocolate bar might contain 40g. And when that sugar is combined with fat as part of the process, it has an altogether different physiological impact. Furthermore, because processed foo
ds are stripped of protein and fibre, which would normally absorb sugar slowly, a bigger ‘sugar spike’ is caused.
All this may seem, even to the curious, an accidental byproduct of modernised industries: manufacturers of food and drink creating highly efficient manufacturing techniques designed to bring cheap food speedily to the shopper in the supermarkets. It is true that employees of the food industries scour the globe looking for suitable products for their customers, but they are supported in their search for new foodstuffs, back home, by teams of scientists working at the micro level of food and drink. Traditionally, their basic concerns have been with sugar, fat and salt – the basic ingredients of much that constitutes the modern diet.15 Each has been studied by scientists and mathematicians to explore the best ways of incorporating those ingredients into a particular food and drink. Sugar has, for example, been reduced in the laboratory to a simple fructose additive that will boost the allure of the food to which it is added.16 At its most extreme, food scientists have not so much tinkered with foods as invented new foods – some of which owe their very existence to experiments in laboratories. Moreover, the more successful foods have been sweetened specifically to enhance their appeal to children.
Food manufacturers have invested untold millions of dollars, pounds and euros changing, improving and inventing foodstuffs and drinks ‘that are quite literally irresistible’. In 1985, for instance, General Foods had a research budget of $113 million.17 What they were searching for were products that would hit what became known as the ‘bliss point’: ‘For all ingredients in food and drink, there is an optimum concentration at which the sensory pleasure is maximal. This optimum level is called the bliss point.’18
The concept of a ‘bliss point’ was coined in the 1970s by a Hungarian mathematician, and was quickly adopted by the food industry as a means of promoting their products.19 In the course of the 1990s, what had been a vague but interesting concept solidified into a hard and fast scientific fact – a belief that had a certain plausibility was now accepted as a scientific formula and a commercial device.
At various late-twentieth-century gatherings of food scientists, food executives and advertisers, the concept of the ‘bliss point’ settled into a key concept in their technical vernacular. Here was a word – bliss – that they could use with some abandon, knowing that it conjured up happiness. Moreover, it was a form of happiness that seemed to be grounded in empirically proven fact. Time and again, the food industry was urged not to worry about the suggestion of happiness associated with the use of the word ‘bliss’. After all, when they sold their food and drink, they were promoting tastes that people enjoyed. Nutrition was a minor issue which, in the minds of most customers, did not even register when they scanned their supermarket aisles for their daily sustenance.
Above all else, what offered the ‘bliss point’ more than any other single commodity was sugar. The reason is straightforward; in the words of one commentator, ‘Humans like sweetness . . .’ The trick is getting the quantities just right. The aim of food and drinks companies was then to ensure they consistently hit the ‘bliss point’ for sweetness.20
When food and drink executives convened at their international gatherings, this and similar messages was music to their ears. It was delivered to them by various market and scientific researchers. Bliss – pleasure – was quantifiable and could be doled out by the sugary spoonful and added to an endless range of foods and drinks. Moreover, it was confirmed by an abundance of research into the physiology of taste – studies of how the tongue’s receptors transmitted sensations to the brain, and how the brain responded to the different tastes entering the body. That research also suggested that the brain demands still more pleasure when sweetness enters the system. The individual is prompted to eat even more of the initially sweet delight. All this – a complex science which lies on the frontiers of scientific and neurological research – was naturally of great interest to the food industry. Their new target was to harness what science had told them to the best commercial advantage – to persuade people, via their complex nutritional chemistry, to like a product so much that their body demands more of the same. It is, in fact, the pattern of behaviour that shapes a variety of addictions. In this case, it is a craving for sweetness – and then still more sweetness.21 The appreciation of the science of addiction led the food industry to add critical additives to their products – and none more important and successful than sugar. Sugar and sweeteners became, in effect, the bait around which they could promote a product. People loved a sweet taste, and demanded more of the same on a regular basis.
If the scientific and nutritional researches of the late twentieth century into taste and sweetness provided lucrative opportunities for the food and drink industry, the very same evidence was equally valuable to their opponents, more especially those who began to point to the links with obesity. While sugar was just one of a string of food and drink additives that fell under the scrutiny of scientific and governmental bodies worried about the wider problems of nutrition and well-being, there was mounting evidence to suggest it played an even more corrosive role than its early critics had imagined.
The initial campaign against sugar was American, and arose from the concern about the role of sugar in processed and instant foods, and the links to obesity. Growing numbers of parents were concerned about what they learned about the chemistry of new foods – fears about the artificial flavours and colourings, and the huge volumes of salt, fat and sugar added to those foods. It coincided with worries, reported by parents themselves, about the hyperactivity of their children. Was it caused by the very food the children liked?
Again, the food industry rallied its forces – its scientists, lobbyists and marketeers – to discredit criticism and reassure customers of the healthy nature of their products. Their arguments were rooted in the broad acceptance that babies and the young liked sweetness from their first days; a love of sugar was a natural, physiological urge and not to be denounced or dismissed by critics. The food industry was merely providing – so they claimed – in modern forms and varieties, the food and drink which humans naturally loved and craved. We now know, however, that behind the science of the food industry there lay some intricate political machinations, and downright deception, to hide what they knew to be the realities behind the impact of sugar.
When the chorus of criticism against sugar began to grow in the 1960s, the sugar and food lobby adopted a number of different tactics to head off its opponents. We now know, from very recent research, that they took steps to buy supportive scientific support. Over a period of fifty years, sugar interests have subsidised research that would deflect and minimise the truth about the impact of sugar on obesity. They did this by turning the scientific spotlight on to other ingredients. With substantial funding from the sugar lobby, a team of Harvard scientists reviewed scientific research in such a way as to minimise the importance of sugar, and push the blame for obesity on to fat. Fat, not sugar, was firmly placed centre-stage in the rising debate about obesity. This discovery – in the papers of deceased Harvard professors, and only exposed in September 2016 – raised a much broader and more sensitive issue, namely the role of industrial sponsorship in scientific research.
The Harvard revelations prompted wider concerns about the way scientific research is often sponsored by major corporations. It became apparent that a raft of researchers were being funded by those with a vested interest in sugar. And a similar story unfolded in Britain, of scientists pursuing their research courtesy of funding via the sugar lobby. This ought not to be so surprising, though. Such co-operation is long-standing and widely accepted in many areas of corporate and political life – necessary even. But the whole issue left a string of very real concerns.
It emerged that all the major food and drinks industries used scientific studies to deflect criticism of their unhealthy ingredients, and particularly sugar. After a fashion, that might not be thought unusual. The food industry was, after all, a vast, complex
concern which had for decades used scientific research to devise and improve its products. What was revealed in 2016, however, was substantially different. Sugar executives had set out, from the mid-1960s, to devise research, and to encourage findings, that would remove the spotlight from sugar. To do that, they needed amenable researchers, in prestigious institutions, willing to help – in return for financial support.
The revelations of 2015–16 exposed what some had long suspected – that the food industry was specifically paying scientists to produce reports favourable to their products and their general interests. The long-term consequences of that research, launched in 1967, served to divert attention away from sugar towards other possible causes of obesity. It proved to be a highly successful tactic and, for the best part of half a century, sugar was effectively exonerated.22 In the process, it also led to the denigration and belittling of serious researchers who wrote about the dangers of the excessive use of sugar in our modern diet.23
At one level, this was just the latest twist in a remarkably old and durable story – of sugar’s hold over US politics and strategy. However, by 2016, it was equally clear that matters of public health had become of prime concern – and not merely in the USA. Sugar’s influential grip could no longer be allowed to exist unchallenged. It was clearly playing a corrosive role in the widespread decline of the nation’s health and well-being. What made the task more daunting was that sugar lay at the heart of many enjoyable features of modern life – not least, the relatively recent and rapidly spreading social habit of dining out.