Food4Kids guidelines out!

The present months or even years might, in time, be referred to as the ‘sugar wars’. We may look back on this time as we do the tobacco industry’s plight, over 20 years ago, when it was desperately trying to convince the public, and governments, that tobacco was neither addictive nor a cause of lung cancer.

Well, today, Big Food, the associations that represent it, and a plethora of scientists, mainly those who have benefited from funding by the likes of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo that control three-quarters of the world’s beverage market, argue sugar is not a key player in the obesity crisis. They also deny increasingly compelling evidence of sugar addiction, which has been particularly well studied in rat models. Instead,  they attempt to apportion blame to a lack of physical activity. Obesity and the metabolic disease rife in our society and one presenting itself in an ever younger population, are of course complex conditions brought on by a multitude of factors, not all of them easily within individual, governmental or corporate control. But the reality is that the marketplace is full of high sugar foods and unhealthy snacks and Big Food spends billions each year marketing these to vulnerable children and adolescents who then develop a lifelong habit for them.

Following on from our release of the ANH-Intl Food4Health plate for adults in January this year, we now release our Food4Kids guidelines, the subject of our main feature this week.

On a loosely related note, dr Harald Gaier also offers his views on the increasing loss of bitterness in our diets, what its implications are — and what you can do about it.

Don’t forget to update yourself on the week’s natural health news, and please share our stories as widely as you can.  You might be especially interested in Jerome Burne’s piece Utopia: A realistic blueprint for an honest drug industry.

With the natural health of the next generation especially in mind, I wish you a pleasant, productive, rewarding and low-sugar life

Rob Verkerk, PhD

Founder, executive & scientific director