sugar

Hawaii’s sugar workers are packing up the state’s final harvest and waving goodbye to an industry that was once king, says NPR. Mechanization in mills on the mainland, competition from Brazil, and rising labor costs have crippled Hawaiian sugar. Now only one mill remains, and when it shuts down at the end of the year, 675 workers will lose their jobs.

Starting in 2018, Nestlé candy products will include a newly formulated version of sugar. The innovation will allow the company to lower sugar content 40 percent, says The New York Times. Without divulging exactly how Nestlé changed the traditional sugar molecule, Dr. Stefan Catsicas, the company’s chief technology officer, explained, “It is sugar, but it is assembled differently so it can disassemble easily in your mouth with less going into your gastrointestinal tract."

"At a time when public mistrust of science runs high, and non-experts are hard-pressed to separate fact from industry-sponsored spin, Sense About Science, a charity based in London with an affiliate in New York, presents itself as a trustworthy arbiter," says Liza Gross in FERN’s latest story, "Seeding For Science,” which was co-produced with The Intercept.

Sharply higher prices for cheese, butter and sugar pushed up the FAO Food Price Index by 0.7 percent, continuing an unbroken rise from July. The index, which tracks prices for five groups of foods, has been on the rise throughout this year and is now 9 percent higher than one year ago.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told a soda industry group, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter, to stop using him in its campaign against soda taxes in California's Bay Area, says Politico. Sanders says he has not taken a position on referendums in San Francisco and Oakland and it is "false" and "misleading" for the American Beverage Association to feature him in advertising.

Industry documents reveal that the sugar industry began working closely with nutrition scientists in the mid-1960s to single out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of coronary heart disease and to downplay evidence that sugar was also a risk factor, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The portion of the U.S. population that is overweight or obese keeps growing larger - literally - and some experts say the "food environment" is a reason, says Vox, citing Scott Kahan, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness. "[I]n America," says Kahan, "the unhealtiest foods are the tastiest foods, the cheapest foods, the largest-portion foods, the most available foods and the most fun foods."

Fifteen years after an agreement by Florida and federal officials to revive the Everglades, "billions of dollars have been spent but not much marsh has recovered," says the Miami Herald. "But a review of the key decision points by Florida policymakers over the last two decades shows that one key player in the fate of the Everglades has grown healthier and stronger: Big Sugar."

Surging grain, sugar, meat and dairy prices worldwide drove up the FAO Food Price Index 4.2 percent, the steepest one-month increase in the index in four years. June was the fifth month in a row for an increase in the index, which tracks the average international price of a basket of food commodities, now at its highest reading since last July.

High sugar and trans-fats in Indian food are turning the world’s second most populous country diabetic, while child malnutrition in the region is slowly retreating, the 2016 Global Nutrition Report said. The study found that diabetes, a deficiency that inhibits the body to effectively use insulin, affects 9.5 percent of India’s population, putting it ahead of the U.K. and the U.S., and on par with China. Furthermore, 2 percent of deaths in all age groups in India are a result of diabetes, the WHO said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is "fairly hands-on when it comes to his kids' diet," says Roll Call, in excerpting a People magazine interview with the Wisconsin Republican and 2012 vice-presidential nominee.

The third year in a row of steadily increasing global demand for sugar, forecast to reach a record 174 million tonnes in 2016/17, is eating through stockpiles that began to pile up in 2012, says USDA. "Consequently, stocks are approaching what appear to be historically low levels," said the semi-annual Sugar: World Markets and Trade report.

U.S. sugarcane growers will be unable to provide enough sugar to meet demand from food and beverage makers, so the USDA raised the import quota for cane sugar 15 percent for the year ending on Sept. 30.

Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S) is facing a $30 million revenue loss from 2015 with worse projections to come, says The Guardian.

Consumers are turning to foods they shunned a few years ago, says the New York Times: "Under the new thinking, not all fat is bad and neither are all salty foods. A stigma among the public remains for sugar substitutes but less so for cane sugar, at least in moderation. And all of those things are weighed against qualities like simplicity and taste."

The intramural squabble in the sweetener industry died out quietly, with the a trade group for corn syrup producers halting its efforts to curtail subsidies for sugar growers, said Reuters.

Perhaps Americans paid attention to the roll-out of the updated Dietary Guidelines, which for the first time recommend a limit on consumption of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily calories. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-January "finds that 58 percent [of respondents] say they tried to limit sugar in their diets in the previous 30 days," says Reuters.