Sugar daddies

Reader Liz reminds us of the uncanny resonances of the E.Coli Conservatism in the Nursery story to this 2004 tale of the Department of "Health and Human Services"—here at The Big Con, it goes in quotation marks for the duration of the Bush regime—selling out science for fun and profit:

In a leaked confidential letter to the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Lee Jong-Wook, the US government has rejected decades of nutritional research and denied that there is any evidence of a link between junk food and obesity. The letter, from William R Steiger, special assistant at the Department of Health and Human Services and godson to George Bush Sr, is the United States' official response to an April 2003 report by the WHO and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). That report, entitled "Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases," argues that governments should take steps to limit children's exposure to junk-food advertising, and says that added sugar should comprise no more than 10% of a healthy diet.

The report was released last spring, prompting American food manufacturers' groups to begin frantic lobbying in Washington. The Sugar Association wrote to Gro Harlem Brundtland, then WHO director-general, threatening to "exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of the report. Congressmen recruited by the food industry urged the Secretary of Health, Tommy Thompson, to cut off the $406 million annual US contribution to the WHO.

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