sugar

The amount of land used for agriculture in Hawaii has declined 68 percent since 1980, primarily because of the end of pineapple and sugar cultivation, said the Washington Post.

A USDA report says that when food companies reformulate their products to reduce the salt and sugar content, the fat content, which can raise blood cholesterol, tends to go up, says the Washington Post.

Top place in the 2017 Food Sustainability Index goes to a repeat winner, France, followed by Japan, Germany, Spain, and Sweden, says the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Newly released documents from the 1960s show that the sugar industry funded research on sugar and cardiovascular health “and then buried the data when it suggested that sugar could be harmful,” says the New York Times.

A series of emails obtained under a state freedom of information law suggest major food companies have a "roadmap for dealing with scientific challenges," says the leader of the nonprofit group U.S. Right to Know in a Bloomberg story. The emails by current and former Coca-Cola executives suggest actions such as enlisting outside organizations to question dietary advice that was contrary to their business interests.

After 44 years as president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Michael Jacobson is stepping down. During his long tenure, Jacobson not only helped develop nutrition labels, he “has also had a hand in halting the marketing of many sugar-filled foods to children, reducing salt levels in packaged foods, and banning transfats,” says NPR.

On the rise for the third month in a row, the Food Price Index is now the highest since January 2015, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The latest increase in the index is due to higher prices for cereal grains, sugar and dairy. In early 2015, prices were declining from the peak in 2011, when drought affected global food supplies. 

There are still details to work out but the commerce ministers of Mexico and the United States announced an agreement in principal on sweetener trade after negotiations stretched a day past the U.S. deadline for a deal. The tentative agreement takes off the table a long-running dispute as the Trump administration prepares its proposals for revising the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says that far from being a healthy drink, "Fruit juice has no essential role in healthy, balanced diets of children." American children between the ages of 2 and 18 consume almost half their fruit intake in the form of juice, but doctors warn that has to stop.

Voters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, decide today whether to adopt a 2-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages — not just on sodas, but on sweetened sports drinks like Gatorade, lemonades and caffeinated energy drinks, among others, says U.S. News & World Report. Artificially sweetened drinks, infant formula, chocolate milk, pure fruit juices, and weight-loss drinks like Ensure would be exempted.

Drinking one to six diet sodas a week doubles the risk for stroke and may also increase the risk for dementia, according to a study of 4,000 people over age 45 in the journal Stroke. The reasons for the link are unknown, says The New York Times.

The drive for healthy diets has targeted over-consumption and excess fat in food. "Now, there's a fuill-on war on sugar," says Vox, laying out why the subject is more complicated than it first appears and offering "11 facts to clear up the confusion."

In "the opening shot of 2017," health advocates filed suit in federal court in Oakland, Calif., accusing Coca-Cola and the trade group American Beverage Association of deceiving consumers of the health risk of sugary drinks and saying there was no link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity, says Quartz. Coca-Cola said the lawsuit was "legally and factually meritless."

One of the world’s largest candy companies, Mars Inc., “is breaking ranks with other food companies and denouncing an industry-funded paper that says global recommendations on limiting sugar are based on weak science,” says Associated Press. A company spokesman told the AP the paper makes …