Follow Topics

29 June 2012, 6.05am EST

Preventing weight gain: the dilemma of effective regulation

OBESE NATION: It’s time to admit it – Australia is becoming an obese nation. This series looks at how this has happened and more importantly, what we can do to stop the obesity epidemic. Today, we look at whether we can regulate to curb the epidemic. Here Fiona Haines discusses the barriers to regulations…

B3n3jrz4-1340780668 — Government attention is diverted away from the problem during the regulatory reform process. Kristina Alexanderson

OBESE NATION: It’s time to admit it – Australia is becoming an obese nation. This series looks at how this has happened and more importantly, what we can do to stop the obesity epidemic.

Today, we look at whether we can regulate to curb the epidemic. Here Fiona Haines discusses the barriers to regulations that would help end the obesity epidemic while Bebe Loff and Helen Walls argue there’s a “gap” in regulation waiting to be filled with government action.

The burden of obesity is costly to individuals whose health is poor and who are often stigmatised. And it’s costly to governments through increased health costs. So, why isn’t more being done?

Tackling obesity effectively will involve increased regulation, such as requiring clear labels on food to make sure people know what is healthy (so-called traffic light labelling) and prohibiting junk food advertising to children during peak viewing hours. Both of these measures are recommendations of the 2009 Preventative Health Task Taskforce. And both make sense. But, getting effective regulation in place is hard. Why is it so difficult?

Firstly, regulatory reform is challenging for government. During the process of regulatory reform, government attention is diverted away from the problem at hand (in this case obesity) to responding to business concerns with their profitability. And to reassuring the population at large (often in the wake of some public pressure) that the government really is taking the problem seriously.

Front-of-packet traffic-light labelling would be an effective way to signal what foods are healthy. Ian Clark

Dig a little deeper and what is at issue is political legitimacy that must be maintained (and preferably enhanced if you are the incumbent government) through the reform process.

Regulatory reform always takes place in the context of maintaining political legitimacy. In turn, political legitimacy (or political risk as I call it in The Paradox of Regulation) rests on the horns of a dilemma between “keeping the economy going” (which often translates into responding to business demands) and “making people feel safe” (essentially, reassurance).

But a government tending to its legitimacy cannot simply be dismissed as engaged in a cynical political ploy. It may be, but without legitimacy governments struggle and ultimately fall. Legitimacy is critical to any government – of whatever persuasion.

It does mean, though, that regulatory reform is fraught – and the loser is too often a potentially effective measure to deal with a social problem. Governments across the world – including our own – have swung into action against obesity at least at the level of inquiries, recommendations and policy initiatives. But how well these translate into action depends on how a government manages its political risk.

The bargaining process often sees businesses taking some steps to appease government and public demands, such as putting labels on food, but not ones that communicate clearly and effectively, or a voluntary (and small) reduction in television advertising of junk food to children. It also sees governments reassuring us, by such measures as public campaigns with cute figures encouraging us to “exercise more”. Measures such as these are unlikely to make much of an impact in reducing our collective waistlines.

Limiting junk food advertising to children during peak viewing hours would be an effective measure. RichardBH/Flickr

Decisive action by governments – the oft-cited “strong political leadership” is critical to effective regulation. This must be based on weighing up available evidence and not just showing strength for the sake of it. Evidence is tricky, though. Pushing for “more research” is a common stalling tactic.

And there are additional challenges. Even if measures supported by the best available evidence (such as traffic light labelling on the front-of-food packaging and removing advertising junk food to children between 6am and 9pm as recommended in the Government’s response to the National Preventative Health Taskforce) are implemented, regulation is no panacea.

Regulation suggests that you can reduce a problem (such as obesity) while keeping all the benefits (to individuals, companies and governments) that have led to higher rates of obesity. These benefits are part of a very long list that includes cheap takeaway food, sprawling suburbs with affordable housing but little public transport or amenities, short meal breaks, long working hours, quick treats for ratty kids when you’re tired from a long day’s work, high profits in the food processing industries, foods that are transportable and keep for long periods without spoiling and so on.

Regulation acts a bit like a “surgical bombing raid” – it promises much, but often delivers less.

The Commonwealth Government was wrong in rejecting traffic light labelling. But, comprehensive measures to tackle obesity will not come in a single convenient package. Tackling obesity in a serious manner will bring considerable public benefit. But it creates losers – both powerful businesses and ordinary folk – in the short term. That is our dilemma.

This is part six of our series Obese Nation. To read the other instalments, follow the links below:

Part one: Mapping Australia’s collective weight gain

Part two: Explainer: overweight, obese, BMI – what does it all mean?

Part three: Explainer: how does excess weight cause disease?

Part four: Recipe for disaster: creating a food supply to suit the appetite

Part five: What’s economic growth got to do with expanding waistlines?

Part seven: Filling the regulatory gap in chronic disease prevention

Part eight: Why a fat tax is not enough to tackle the obesity problem

Part nine: Education, wealth and the place you live can affect your weight

Part ten: Innovative strategies needed to address Indigenous obesity

Part eleven: Two books, one big issue: Why Calories Count and Weighing In

Part twelve: Putting health at the heart of sustainability policy

Part thirteen: Want to stop the obesity epidemic? Let’s get moving

Part fourteen: Fat of the land: how urban design can help curb obesity

Part fifteen: Industry-sponsored self-regulation: it’s just not cricket

Part sixteen: Regulation and legislation as tools in the battle against obesity

Articles also by This Author

10 April 2013 Crime and business: a cautionary tale in the Asian century

28 July 2011 A recipe for making the carbon tax a success

You are free to republish this article both online and in print, as long as you follow some simple guidelines, which are summarised here:

Unless you have express permission from the author, you can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. To make material edits contact us
You have to credit our authors and partner institutions — ideally in the byline.
You have to credit The Conversation — ideally at the top of the article and include our logo — with a link back to either our home page, The Conversation, or (preferably) the specific article URL on The Conversation website.
If space is tight, you can run the first few lines of the article and then say: “Read the full article at The Conversation” with a link back to the article page on our site.
If you’re republishing online, you must use our page view counter, link to us, and include links from our story.
It’s okay to put our articles on pages with ads, but you can’t sell our material separately.
You have to confirm that you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some sources, such as AAP, don't allow their images to be republished without permission.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Join the conversation

20 Comments sorted by

James Jenkin

EFL Teacher Trainer

The author has no doubt that "tackling obesity effectively will involve increased regulation". She suggests the only barrier is lack of political will.

However, you might argue in response that it's unwise to rush gung ho into passing laws to change behaviour, because you need to consider unintended consequences.

Wansink and Just, whose research was used as justification for New York's ban on super-sized soft drinks, suggest "openly serving someone lowfat or reduced-calorie meals tends to lead…
Read more

The author has no doubt that "tackling obesity effectively will involve increased regulation". She suggests the only barrier is lack of political will.

However, you might argue in response that it's unwise to rush gung ho into passing laws to change behaviour, because you need to consider unintended consequences.

Wansink and Just, whose research was used as justification for New York's ban on super-sized soft drinks, suggest "openly serving someone lowfat or reduced-calorie meals tends to lead to increased fat or calorie consumption over the whole day. People reason that because they were forced to be good for one meal, they can splurge on snacks and desserts at later meals" (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/06/how-bloombergs-soft-drink-ban-will-backfire-on-nyc-public-health/258501/#).

One US study (http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2008a/080211SwithersAPA.html) suggests artificial sweeteners - the choice of which traffic-light labelling might encourage - may increase risk of obesity and other health problems.

I don't know what the unintended consequences of a ban on junk food advertising and labelling laws might be. But it's prudent to think about them.

11 months ago report
1. Fiona Haines
  
  Professor of Criminology at University of Melbourne
  
  In reply to James Jenkin
  
  This is a very helpful point. Certainly, regulation often has unintended consequences. This is often because regulation is best understood as an instrumental problem solving approach to public policy. That is, it is most often focused on one particular problem. In doing so, it may exacerbate other problems and risks. Cass Sunstein's work is interesting here. The second issue you point out is also helpful, that breaking down to a single measure may also have counterproductive effect. This can be…
  Read more
  
  This is a very helpful point. Certainly, regulation often has unintended consequences. This is often because regulation is best understood as an instrumental problem solving approach to public policy. That is, it is most often focused on one particular problem. In doing so, it may exacerbate other problems and risks. Cass Sunstein's work is interesting here. The second issue you point out is also helpful, that breaking down to a single measure may also have counterproductive effect. This can be for various reasons. It suggests as the Preventative Taskforce pointed out that you need a package of measure. The difficulty is that each measure has to run the political gamut and you are unlikely to get a comprehensive package of measures as suggested through the reform process. Ultimately, then specific regulatory interventions, such as traffic light labelling need to be part of a package of measures, but it is political and economic factors that can result in a less than ideal situation where counterproductive effects are likely in the gaps of what was not implemented
  
  11 months ago report
2. James Jenkin
  
  EFL Teacher Trainer
  
  In reply to Fiona Haines
  
  Hi Fiona, thanks very much for your response. It makes sense that any intervention needs to be seen as part of a package.
  
  Perhaps - I admit - I'm uneasy about experts trying to influence people's behaviour without their knowing.
  
  11 months ago report
rory robertson

rory robertson is a Friend of The Conversation.

former fattie

Regulation - either of TV ads or introducing "Traffic lights" - will be ineffective if other high-profile information works strongly in the other direction. What should be regulated - or at least corrected without delay - is high-profile misinformation produced by scientists on the public payroll. In particular, the high-profile 2011 paper "Australian Paradox" - claiming that sugar consumption and obesity are unrelated - is as embarrassingly lightweight and false as the authors' subsequent claim…
Read more

Regulation - either of TV ads or introducing "Traffic lights" - will be ineffective if other high-profile information works strongly in the other direction. What should be regulated - or at least corrected without delay - is high-profile misinformation produced by scientists on the public payroll. In particular, the high-profile 2011 paper "Australian Paradox" - claiming that sugar consumption and obesity are unrelated - is as embarrassingly lightweight and false as the authors' subsequent claim that the associated uptrend in available sugar was gobbled up not by humans but as ethanol production for vehicle fuel. Yet zero or close to zero raw sugar is used in that process in Australia.

Why not take my $40,000 challenge, where the payoff comes if you can prove that Professor Jennie Brand-Miller and Dr Alan Barclay's conclusion - that sugar consumption (by humans!) declined substantially between 1980 and 2010 - is NOT spectacularly false? It's all documented at http://www.australianparadox.com/ . Until someone withdraws that woeful paper and corrects the public record, the public will continue to be misinformed on the causes of obesity, and the credibility of the once-respected science departments of the University of Sydney will continue to erode.

More generally, obesity obviously is a function of consuming "too many" calories/kilojoules over an extended period. The key question is why we do that, when the body has natural appetite controls. One answer is that the unnaturally high level of added sugar/fructose in modern diets does something bad to appetite control, prompting food cravings and the desire for excessive snacks and outsized meals. Anyone who has reversed their own trend to obesity simply by removing added sugar/fructose from their diet thinks that is the obvious answer for society in general.

That is, overweight people who want to lose weight should go out of their way to stop eating processed fructose - anything sweet including fruit juice but not whole fruits. After doing that with limited slippage for (say) a year, most will be able look around and ponder all the second-order issues that make society's trend to obesity so complicated.

11 months ago report
Melanie White

Registered Nurse, Academic

Tackling obesity requires understanding what will work before jumping in with regulations that may not work.

Traffic light labelling won't necessarily prevent obesity because it doesn't tell you how healthy a food is, it just tells you the ratio of some of the components. There is still a lot of research to be done, particularly in regards to sugar and the effect of sweeteners, before we can really come up with "healthy labelling".

Does regulation work anyway? It seems to me that cultural shifts are needed, and that doesn't happen through regulation alone.

11 months ago report
1. Fiona Haines
  
  Professor of Criminology at University of Melbourne
  
  In reply to Melanie White
  
  I agree that regulation alone will not solve the problem as I argued in my short piece, it is no panacea. There needs to be a comprehensive approach, and this approach may well be heavily resisted. Your point on cultural change is a good one too, but understanding how cultural change comes about also involves understanding how law, markets and social norms interact. Regulation can be a part of cultural change or it can result from cultural change or it can result from a compromise between various interests. In a nutshell regulation cannot be put as outside of cultural change but the relation between the two need to be understood.
  
  11 months ago report
2. Melanie White
  
  Registered Nurse, Academic
  
  In reply to Fiona Haines
  
  Thanks for your reply Fiona. I agree a comprehensive approach is needed.
  
  Nevertheless, I still think more thought (and that means more research for a greater understanding) is required before regulation. Regulation introduced without the evidence can mean we don't do any harm but miss doing the best good, or it can make things worse.
  
  For example, with the junk food advertising, we know that kids are influenced by what they see on TV. But does banning junk food advertising on TV between specific…
  Read more
  
  Thanks for your reply Fiona. I agree a comprehensive approach is needed.
  
  Nevertheless, I still think more thought (and that means more research for a greater understanding) is required before regulation. Regulation introduced without the evidence can mean we don't do any harm but miss doing the best good, or it can make things worse.
  
  For example, with the junk food advertising, we know that kids are influenced by what they see on TV. But does banning junk food advertising on TV between specific hours reduce the undesired behaviours, or just the desire for specific "popular" junk foods?
  
  As an obese person I find that any food advertising, including the 'healthy' cereals, triggers an immediate hunger response. But I wouldn't take my own experience as typical, it just makes me question the validity of reducing junk food advertising as a way to reduce unhealthy eating behaviours. I would like to see all food advertising removed from tv, magazines, billboards, and only allowed in places that sell food. When I am away from food advertising I don't think about food until I am hungry.
  
  My point here is that perhaps we should be looking at the wider picture, and if we find we need to regulate, then let's get that regulation right so that it has the most effect.
  
  Secondly, looking at the example of traffic light labelling. I do not believe this is the answer. As other responders have also noted, they don't tell the full story. A food substance with little nutritional value that is low in fats, sugars and salt but lots of artificial ingredients could end up getting a green light, whereas something with sound nutrition, good fats, low or no sugar could get the red light. I do believe we should have labelling, and that it should be standardised, but in a way that can be understood and not manipulated.
  
  Let's not dumb down our society by introducing regulations that are meant to make it easy, but will most likely backfire such as traffic light labelling. The problem isn't that the current labelling is wrong (except where the font is too small to read). It's the confusing messages about what is good and what is bad - should we have low fat? should we have low sugar? how much is the right amount? is it trans fats that are bad or saturated fats or polyunsaturated fats? If we don't have those answers yet then traffic light labelling is going to be wrong.
  
  If it is difficult to get regulation in, imagine the difficulty of getting wrong regulations out. Think also of the anger and frustration of people as we move from one system of labelling to another. While research may be seen as a stalling tactic, it should not be missed in the desire to get a fix for the "epidemic".
  
  I do not agree with the initial question in your piece "why isn't more being done?" It is being 'done'... it is the research that is going on, now, in the background. It takes time. We do not yet know enough about the trending of obesity and what will slow it down to introduce regulations.
  
  Yes, the ambulance is currently at the bottom of the cliff, but let's allow time to learn how to build forests to prevent people from getting near the edge of the cliff rather than building potentially shonky fences.
  
  11 months ago report
nik dow

logged in via Twitter

There is one example of combatting obesity by removing regulation, and that is bicycle helmet law.

Given that the health benefits of cycling outweight the risks by a large factor, it only takes a small disincentive to cycling from this regulation to produce an overall negative health outcome. It has been calculated for Australia that the break-even point from a health expenditure measure is a drop in bicycle trips of around 1 or 2 percent. Given the number of fines issued for not wearing a helmet, the disincentive to cycle from this regulation is clear.

Ref: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01785.x/abstract

11 months ago report
1. Mark Amey
  
  logged in via Facebook
  
  In reply to nik dow
  
  I can't believe that the only thing standing between some people and a refreshing bike ride is a $30 helmet. Are they too expensive, too heavy, give people helmet hair? Sounds like a lame excuse.
  
  11 months ago report
2. nik dow
  
  logged in via Twitter
  
  In reply to Mark Amey
  
  You query the disincentive effect of helmet laws. I don't know how many thousands of fines the police issue each year for this offence, but it would have to be a pretty effective deterrent to those trips which people want to or find more convenient to make without a helmet.
  
  11 months ago report
3. Seamus Gardiner
  
  Citizen
  
  In reply to Mark Amey
  
  Yeah,
  I agree mark. I wouldn't take a ride without one. But this is a case where regulation may have led to a net decline in public health, despite foreseeably saving some (many?) individuals from increasing severity of head injury.
  It's not the same argument as seat belts as there really is no benefit to society from not wearing seatbelts... Apart from increasing people's 'freedoms' or perception of freedom.
  Damn I may find myself agreeing with James Jenkin!
  
  It is clear that extrapolating rationale and results from one public health policy to another domain may lead to unintended consequences. No reason not to implement, but reason enough to reverse the policy if it doesn't work.
  
  Personally (warning :opinion not evidence based) I reckon we should peel back helmet laws, get people on public bikes and roads in places like central Melbourne where introducing rental bikes has had limited uptake because of the helmet issue.
  
  11 months ago report
4. nik dow
  
  logged in via Twitter
  
  In reply to Seamus Gardiner
  
  The rental bikes are a good place to start because the data collection is excellent, and typically these types of bikes have an even better safety record than general cycling. See for example http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4521.full "The health risks and benefits of cycling in urban environments compared with car use: health impact assessment study" in BMJ 2011;343:d4521 which uses data from the Barcelona bike share and finds the benefit:risk ratio is 77:1 with most of the risk coming from air pollution not trauma.
  
  At the same time, rental bikes suffer the greatest disincentive from helmet laws, making them an even better place to trial a relaxation of these laws.
  
  11 months ago report
5. Mark Amey
  
  logged in via Facebook
  
  In reply to nik dow
  
  I don't doubt that people have been surveyed, and so on, but, I think that both Sean and myself probably have seen the nasty end of some bicycle accidents in the Emergency Room. I have hit the back of a car at about 45 ks, and would have, I believe, suffered a head injury had I not been wearing a helmet. Therefore I wouldn't ride a bike without one.
  
  We actually have some great bike tracks in Newcastle, but, unfortunately, all are shared with walkers, who seem to have tremendous propensity for causing accidents!
  
  11 months ago report
Margo Saunders

Public Health Policy Researcher

The problem here is that the notion of 'regulation' is unhelpfully broad, as it covers everything from more explicit nutritional labelling to restrictions on portion sizes to mandated food reformulation. Some of these will obviously be contribute more than others to reducing obesity, and some will only be effective if accompanied by initiatives to increase health literacy and to change social norms.
Thirteen years have passed since Swinburn et al published their article ('Dissecting obesogenic…
Read more

The problem here is that the notion of 'regulation' is unhelpfully broad, as it covers everything from more explicit nutritional labelling to restrictions on portion sizes to mandated food reformulation. Some of these will obviously be contribute more than others to reducing obesity, and some will only be effective if accompanied by initiatives to increase health literacy and to change social norms.
Thirteen years have passed since Swinburn et al published their article ('Dissecting obesogenic environments: the development and application of a framework for identifying and prioritizing environmental interventions for obesity') about environmental factors in obesity prevention, introducing the concept of 'obesogenic environments'. Since then, the research has continued to mount, both within Australia and elsewhere. We don't know everything, but we know enough to do much more than we have been doing. In addition to political risk, one problem with public health regulation in Australia is simply the incredibly cumbersome nature of the decision-making process (see discussion at: <http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2012/06/12/why-is-it-so-hard-to-be-a-public-health-hero-in-australia-and-more-reading-on-nanny-bloomberg/>;).
At the end of the day, whether regulation is warranted for a particular issue depends on your beliefs about the role of governments vis a vis individual self-interest (which is complicated given the changing nature of that self-interest). However, the case for regulation is usually supported by the existence of skewed information and market distortions -- two things that we clearly have with obesity, The real questions are, then, not whether regulation is warranted, but what type and how much.

11 months ago report
1. Fiona Haines
  
  Professor of Criminology at University of Melbourne
  
  In reply to Margo Saunders
  
  I agree about the need to look at the specific regulatory initiative, as well as the policy framework overall as regulatory initiatives need to be understood in context. Their success or otherwise may well depend on that context.
  
  In terms of defining regulation, I argue that regulation is characterised by two things: a specific focus (that is reducing obesity, or increasing OHS or decreasing pollution and so on) and political contestation around its effectiveness or otherwise. The debate around…
  Read more
  
  I agree about the need to look at the specific regulatory initiative, as well as the policy framework overall as regulatory initiatives need to be understood in context. Their success or otherwise may well depend on that context.
  
  In terms of defining regulation, I argue that regulation is characterised by two things: a specific focus (that is reducing obesity, or increasing OHS or decreasing pollution and so on) and political contestation around its effectiveness or otherwise. The debate around regulatory measures to address obesity is a good example of both of these.
  
  This raises the key issue of whether regulation as problem solving can address the problem of rising obesity. The evidence to date suggests that it cannot. Effective measures are not put in place because of resistance and because of fears of negative side effects. These as you point out are fuelled by competing values and ideologies but also significant economic interests and government fears around the impact on the economy.
  
  Finally a word on cumbersome processes. These often cannot be understood independently from the particular political debates and arguments that tend to result in adding complexity to decision making processes in the first place. So at different points in time, various parties agree on a process to resolve differences to one issue that result in an increase in the complexity of regulatory reform. Further, processes and regulations can be made more complex as those responsible for complying with new regulations learn to game them, complying with the letter of the law and avoiding the spirit hence leading to more regulations being put in place.
  
  11 months ago report
Paul Wittwer

Orchardist

I remember reading a Canadian study which found a clear link between high density fast-food availability and obesity. I see it in my own town. There are other clear links such as low socio- economic status and poor education.

I think local councils could have a role in regulating the number of fast food outlets per 10,000 head of population.

I believe the Drive Through should be eliminated as it is too easy for people to enter their mobile lounge room with heating/cooling, stereo and the anonymity which allows them to avoid any effort to make themselves presentable in order to feed their fat/sugar addictions.

Another area where regulation needs to be applied is the discounting of sugary drinks in supermarkets. In fact, I believe a sugar tax could be applied to many products to compensate for their cost to society.

11 months ago report
1. Mark Amey
  
  logged in via Facebook
  
  In reply to Paul Wittwer
  
  I agree. It's a common sight to see obese mums with obese kids wheeling a shopping trolley around with a slab of softdrink, chips and chocolates/lollies, with very little real nutrients, or ingredients for home cooking. I don't frequent the fast food places, but imagine they may make a regular appearance there, too.
  
  Of course many have been brought up that way, and genuinely believe that a tub of mashed potato, or boiled peas, or the salad on a burger constitute 'servings of vegetables'. This ideation is difficult to alter when it has been the family's way of eating for, now, two or three generations.
  
  11 months ago report
2. Dianna Arthur
  
  Dianna Arthur is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Environmentalist
  
  In reply to Paul Wittwer
  
  A good start would be to ban labelling products that have high quantities of sugar as "Fat Free".
  
  http://intelegen.com/nutrients/sugar_to_fat_conversion.htm
  
  The way the human body processes carbohydrates is little understand by the average person.
  
  A good start to understanding found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Healthy
  
  Although I have a fast metabolism, I do not eat much processed food - this is due to personal taste as well as health issues.
  
  Hypoglycaemic, I can be very unpleasant…
  Read more
  
  A good start would be to ban labelling products that have high quantities of sugar as "Fat Free".
  
  http://intelegen.com/nutrients/sugar_to_fat_conversion.htm
  
  The way the human body processes carbohydrates is little understand by the average person.
  
  A good start to understanding found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Healthy
  
  Although I have a fast metabolism, I do not eat much processed food - this is due to personal taste as well as health issues.
  
  Hypoglycaemic, I can be very unpleasant to be around when hungry and could be taken in by the current advertising campaign for Snickers Bars: "you are not you when you are hungry". Which is a clever campaign - but there are far better alternatives than a chocolate bar.
  
  I deal by eating cheese, nuts or when really desperate glucose jelly beans (which I keep in car).
  
  I often stare in disbelief when standing in the queue at the check-out at the composition of of people's purchases and their physical appearance; observably overweight. Invariably their trolleys contain frozen meals, ice-cream, soft-drinks (often, amusingly 'diet' soft-drinks), few, if any, fresh vegetables.
  
  There is a clear disconnect between what people consume and their physical fitness.
  
  I guess we can overdose on regulations, but cannot regulate against stupidity - and where would the market be without human stupidity?
  
  11 months ago report
3. rory robertson
  
  rory robertson is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  former fattie
  
  In reply to Dianna Arthur
  
  Hey, lay off the tried and tested Snickers Bar. It's a tasty low-GI food, with a Glycemic Index of only 41. That's way below the 55 break-even point between good and bad carbs - double-check here if you like: http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php
  
  Which brings us to the fundamental flaw with the low-GI approach to nutrition.
  
  Many are aware that the low-GI industry revolves around the claim that low-GI carbohydrates - GI 55 and under - are good for your health while those above GI 55…
  Read more
  
  Hey, lay off the tried and tested Snickers Bar. It's a tasty low-GI food, with a Glycemic Index of only 41. That's way below the 55 break-even point between good and bad carbs - double-check here if you like: http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php
  
  Which brings us to the fundamental flaw with the low-GI approach to nutrition.
  
  Many are aware that the low-GI industry revolves around the claim that low-GI carbohydrates - GI 55 and under - are good for your health while those above GI 55 supposedly are bad.
  
  So everyday boiled potatoes are deemed borderline evil - suffering up to triple-figure GI readings - despite the fact that they score very favourably on the (more important?) measure of "satiety" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7498104 ).
  
  Importantly, it turns out that the “sweet poison” half of table sugar - fructose - has a super-low GI of 19, towards the very bottom of the GI scale. Fructose is super-low GI so it must be a “good" food, right?
  
  And if any processed food product is not low GI, then just add fructose because adding fructose is the recipe for a lower GI reading. Food companies keen to get on board the Low-GI train have an incentive to add fructose, to make processed food lower GI and less healthy in the process.
  
  "How low on the GI scale would you like your manufactured food product, Sir? 54? 53? 41, 40? Tell me when to stop pouring!" Check out the sweet-as low GIs of high-added-fructose “Coca Cola”, "Milo", “Snickers Bar”, "Ice Cream", “Cake” in a search at http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php .
  
  The fact that fructose has a super-low GI of 19 is a profound flaw in the "GI story". This fundamental flaw is the awkward bit the low-GI industry avoids mentioning like the plague.
  
  Awkwardly, if super-low-GI fructose turns out not to be “just another carbohydrate”, but as harmful as Taubes, Lustig, Gillespie and a growing nucleus within the global scientific community believe – that in modern doses it is driving global obesity and diabetes – the low-GI industry will have been completely wrong on the thing that matters most. (Maybe set up a Google "alert" for fructose and watch it happen?)
  
  Someone unkind might then say that the low-GI school at the University of Sydney had spent decades seeking to identify “good carbs” and “bad carbs”, yet somehow managed not to identify the only profoundly bad carbohydrate – fructose.
  
  In any case, incentives matter, so it must be noted that the low-GI industry has a strong incentive to sound certain that sugar/fructose is not a problem, and to dismiss the idea that modern doses of super-low-GI fructose are a major driver of global obesity, diabetes and other self-inflicted “diseases of affluence”.
  
  And that’s what the low-GI industry did – for whatever reasons – when it published its spectacularly wrong but nevertheless high-profile "Australian Paradox" paper in the incompetently peer-reviewed “journal” Nutrients (see #10 and # 11 at http://www.australianparadox.com ).
  
  For the low-GI industry, the good news is that the most-popular carbohydrate in our food supply – added fructose – also is pretty well the lowest-GI carbohydrate. The bad news is that a growing nucleus of global scientific opinion considers super-low-GI fructose to be the primary driver of the global obesity and diabetes epidemics (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all ).
  
  The likelihood that the low-GI industry would tend to contract or collapse if modern doses of super-low-GI fructose/sugar came to be viewed widely by consumers as a major health hazard represents a serious threat - and so a serious conflict of interest - for the high-profile low-GI industry.
  
  At the same time that evidence against super-low-GI fructose has been accumulating, the low-GI industry has been very active in the public debate downplaying publicly the extent to which sugar/fructose is a health hazard.
  
  Apart from the spectacularly false conclusion of the high-profile "Australian Paradox" paper - sugar and obesity are unrelated! - and the repeated-but-still-ridiculous claim in low-GI diet books that "There is an absolute consensus that sugar in food does not cause diabetes" ("an absolute consensus" yet debate rages all around!), the low-GI industry has been busy in the local press:
  
  • http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/a-spoonful-of-sugar-is-not-so-bad/story-e6frg8y6-1226090126776
  • http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/war-over-sweet-nothings/story-e6frg8y6-1226261140744
  • http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/weight-a-minute-dont-blame-sugar/story-fn59niix-1226080214264
  • http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/disgust-at-claims-sugar-as-dangerous-as-alcohol/story-e6frg8y6-1226260002393
  • http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/how-hard-can-it-be-to-cut-sugar-20100630-zmvt.html
  
  The low-GI industry’s serious undisclosed conflict of interest boils down to the following:
  
  (i) It's very important for the prosperity of the low-GI industry that super-low-GI fructose - mixed into tens of thousands of processed foods - remains widely perceived by consumers as safe to eat.
  
  (ii) Low-GI researchers have been high profile in claiming low-GI fructose is safe in usual modern doses.
  
  (iii) There is growing evidence that modern doses of fructose added to processed foods are a key driver of obesity, diabetes and other “diseases of affluence”.
  
  In my opinion, the general public should know about (i) when interpreting (ii).
  
  Just as it turned out to have been a good idea to be sceptical of the tobacco industry’s assurances that smoking is not a health hazard, the University of Sydney, the media and everyday Australians looking for reliable dietary advice need to be aware that the low-GI industry has a strong - indeed, existential - interest in communicating the claim that added sugar in modern doses is not a problem.
  
  Thus the low-GI industry cannot be treated simply as an objective observer in any debate involving sugar/fructose and health issues. It has a serious yet still undisclosed conflict of interest because – given the ubiquity of super-low-GI fructose in today’s food supply - “Sugar is not the problem” must be the low-GI industry’s “party line”.
  
  For those working in Australian universities, the definition that is relevant is as follows: "A conflict of interest exists where there is a divergence between the individual interests of a person and their professional responsibilities such that an independent observer might reasonably conclude that the professional actions of that person are unduly influenced by their own interests" (Section 7 in http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/publications/attachments/r39.pdf ).
  
  I think we can agree that I'm an independent and reasonable observer. And I think it would be good if the University of Sydney's low-GI industry started DISCLOSING its serious-but-so-far-undisclosed conflict of interest in the public debate about obesity, diabetes and related maladies. Indeed, I'm pretty sure there is a regulation - yet to be enforced by the University of Sydney - requiring low-GI researchers to do exactly that (see Section 7, above).
  
  Rory Robertson
  economist and former-fattie
  (now fairly fructose free!)
  strathburnstation@gmail.com
  
  11 months ago report
4. Dianna Arthur
  
  Dianna Arthur is a Friend of The Conversation.
  
  Environmentalist
  
  In reply to rory robertson
  
  Crikey.
  
  I play it safe and at the same time attempt not to be blinded by science.
  
  I would choose a potato over a Snickers bar any day.
  
  Dark chocolate over milk chocolate (don't need to eat as much as it is more satisfying).
  
  Dried fruit over fruit bars.
  
  Can you see a pattern emerging here?
  
  A freshly made hamburger over a Macca's.
  
  Home made oven fried potato chips over fast food french fries.
  
  Home made soup over instant noodles.
  
  And I will justifiably diss Snickers and its ilk as I know from personal experience how these foodstuffs make me feel - rather similar to how I felt trying to digest your post.
  
  Cheers
  
  11 months ago report

Follow Topics

Preventing weight gain: the dilemma of effective regulation

Articles also by This Author

Republish

Join the conversation

20 Comments sorted by

James Jenkin

Fiona Haines

James Jenkin

rory robertson

rory robertson is a Friend of The Conversation.

Melanie White

Fiona Haines

Melanie White

nik dow

Mark Amey

nik dow

Seamus Gardiner

nik dow

Mark Amey

Margo Saunders

Fiona Haines

Paul Wittwer

Mark Amey

Dianna Arthur

Dianna Arthur is a Friend of The Conversation.

rory robertson

rory robertson is a Friend of The Conversation.

Dianna Arthur

Dianna Arthur is a Friend of The Conversation.

The Conversation

Community

Company

Contact

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Articles also by This Author

Want to follow The Conversation?

Republish

Join the conversation

Community

Company

Contact

Subscribe to our Newsletter