Should the Government Regulate Sugar in Food?

The Pressure is On

Attention is on the amount of sugar in our diets. When an issue like this becomes big enough to get debated about on the government level, you know it’s of social concern.

Doctors have come forward and said that eating too much sugar is contributing to obesity and health problems. (See the Dr. Robert Lustig video, Sugar: the Bitter Truth.)

Diabetes is on the rise worldwide, although nobody really knows why. You could speculate that it is due to the increased amount of added and refined sugars in the modern diet. Processed foods are more common and lots of these food products contain sugar or sweetener as a primary ingredient. 

Schools are now under pressure from concerned parents to remove flavored milk from their menu due to the fact that chocolate and strawberry milk contains a ton of added sugars—one single serve carton of chocolate milk (like those sold in school cafeterias) has more sugar than a set of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Consider your 65 lb. child consuming two cartons of chocolate milk during lunch on top of a sandwich made of sugary white bread, sweetened peanut butter and jelly, and then having candy to boot. And that’s just lunch!

Taxes on sweets and sweet drinks in the United States and abroad have been proposed and shot down. As you can imagine, junk food and fizzy drink manufacturers have done their best to stop such a tax as it would cut into their profit margins.

Recently in America there was a proposed bill to regulate junk food advertising aimed at children. It was shot down. In 2010, Coca Cola spent $4,890,000 on lobbying. In 2011 McDonalds spent $1.1 Million on lobbying. These are bitter congressional battles over who controls nutritional requirements, labeling information, and advertising.

As a blogger I’ve noticed more traffic to my website coming from people who are searching about how to get off sugar. I regularly get emails from closet addicts who cannot manage the amount of sugar they eat. They often struggle quietly and secretly. Many don’t know they have a problem until ‘one binge too many’ sends them searching the Internet and they find my site, or one like it, only to recognize themselves in the contents of these web pages.

Been There, Done That

The current situation closely mirrors battles of the past. Cigarettes used to be available to children and adults. When I was in high school there was a designated smoking lounge—for the students—just beyond the cafeteria where kids could go and light up. That was in the late eighties. 14-year-olds could go outside and feed their smoking habit. It seems crazy by today’s standards and, more importantly, by today’s laws. Today it is illegal to smoke indoors in public places. When the suggestion of limiting parameters on tobacco use came up in the past, smokers and libertarians alike got outraged and claimed big government was infringing upon their personal freedom. However, they’re not working to repeal smoking bans.

Second Hand Sweets

A major difference between smoking and sweets is that smoking not only effects the smoker but it also infringes on the rights of those who are close by. You don’t have a second hand soda if I drink one at a table across the aisle from you in a restaurant. Because choosing what to eat is a solitary activity, people believe it’s something that should be left up to the individual. However, our current choices are not properly labeled.

Decisions, Decisions…

Which do you prefer, meat or a vegetable stir fry? Would it matter to you if you knew that the meat was washed in ammonia and seasoned with sugar? What if you knew that the veggies in the stir fry were genetically modified, sprayed with pesticides, drenched in an artificial corn-based sweetener, and fried in cheap corn oil? Do you want someone to tell you if the chemicals and GMOs used in your food have been linked to illness?

Personal Responsibility

Lots of people feel that what you choose to eat is an issue of “personal responsibility.” Fox recently ran a non-scientific Internet poll where (at the time of this writing) 18,777 people voted that the government should not regulate sugar in our food choices. You can and should always take the time to do the research yourself each time before you eat, right? That would be a little easier if the food was labeled properly. However, if you’ve ever attempted to quit sweets or avoid added sugars in your diet, then you have an idea how of little choice you have in the matter—eat or not.

The majority of foods you are exposed to on a daily basis (foods outside of your home kitchen) have so many chemical additives,  sugars, or sugar substitutes that “personal responsibility” means deciding between a rock and a hard place. Personal responsibility is not a choice you make while looking at a menu. Personal responsibility means an ongoing battle of researching, learning, speaking and acting out about what’s best for your well being. 

The giant money machine that brings food products to your table is already controlling our puppet government through a revolving door of well paid company representatives. With food companies paying millions of dollars to lobby for laws that serve their bottom line, the issue is not a matter of big government telling you what to eat or not. It’s big corporations telling you what you can or can’t eat. Meanwhile the US government is conducting armed raids on organic farms that sell unpasteurized milk!

Either we get involved and influence the government or we sit back and consider, “Do you want fries with that,” and, “Would you like to super size,” as examples of our personal freedom and responsibility.

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