AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION RELEASES STRINGENT NEW LIMITS ON CHILDREN'S ADDED SUGAR CONSUMPTION

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East County News Service

August 24, 2016 (Davis, Ca.) - With its new guidelines, the American Heart Association has definitively taken a stand against added sugars, stating that no child should consume more than six teaspoons – or 100 calories – worth a day.

In doing so, the AHA seeks to prevent many of the heart damaging complications tied to excess sugar consumption: high blood pressure, high lipids, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and obesity.

More significantly, they have also taken a strong position against sugary drinks, asking parents to limit consumption of sodas, sports drinks and energy drinks to no more than eight ounces per week for children 2-18 years old and to cut them entirely from the diets of younger children.


 

 


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Comments

Follow the money.

Heritage Society: Sugar beet and sugarcane farms account for about one-fifth of 1 percent of U.S. farms, and sugar producers account for 1.3 percent of the value of total farm and livestock production. There are 2.2 million farms in the United States. Of that total, there are just 3,913 sugar beet farms and 666 sugarcane farms. This relatively small sector of the economy is very politically engaged, accounting for 33 percent of crop industries’ total campaign donations, and 40 percent of crop industries’ total lobbying expenditures. The special treatment that this relatively small interest group receives from the government drives up the price of sugar, jeopardizes export growth, and weakens the U.S. economy. . . . .Wall Street Journal: There is no economic defense of the sugar program, which every year provides nonrecourse loans to sugar processors at a guaranteed price-per-pound. If the market price is below the guarantee when they want to sell, the processors simply dump the crop on the U.S. Department of Agriculture as the loan repayment. To avoid that outcome, the USDA holds sugar prices artificially high by imposing tariffs on imports above an annual quota. The result is that Americans pay about twice what the rest of the world pays for sugar.