sugar

Sydney Mintz "profiled the rural proletariat" - millions of people employed in appalling conditions to produce food for Western consumers - in provocative books that earned him the unofficial title of father of food anthropology, says a New York Times obituary.

The tree sap used in making maple syrup contains half as much sugar as it did in the 1950s and 1960s in the forests of New England, says National Geographic. "The sugar maple is stressed to the point of decline and many scientists studying this beloved tree believe rising temperatures are the cause."

Sugar consumption worldwide is forecast at a record 173 million tonnes this marketing year, the first time that usage has exceeded production since 2009/10, says the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service.

The splashy false-advertising lawsuit filed against corn refiners by the sugar industry was settled out of court under confidential terms. The settlement was announced with the trial under way in federal court in Los Angeles.

In an editorial, the Washington Post advocates a national tax on sugar as the best way to discourage consumption and improve the general health of Americans. Some 16 percent of the calories consumed by Americans daily comes from sugar added to foods during processing, says the Post.

A trial in federal district court in Los Angeles 'has far-reaching implications for the food industry and American consumers," says the Palm Beach Post. Sugar growers accuse the corn processing industry of false advertising for saying that high-fructose corn syrup, which competes with cane and beet sugar for use by food and beverage makers, is "natural" and "nutritionally the same as sugar."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seeking the Republican nomination for president, "is parting ways with the [sugar] industry and calling for an end to government subsidies that have boosted company profits for decades," reports the Washington Post.

Writing in the National Review on Monday, Windsor Mann castigated presidential candidate and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for defending the federal sugar program.

The two leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee, chairman Pat Roberts and top-ranking Democrat Debbie Stabenow, said the U.S. sugar program is safe from challenge within the committee.

"After decades of worsening diets and sharp increases in obesity, Americans' eating habits have begun changing for the better," says the New York Times.

The government proposed that the Nutrition Facts label should say what percentage an item would provide of the recommended daily amount of added sugar to the diet.

The Corn Refiners Association, a trade group whose members make sweeteners, ethanol and starch, "just hired 10 outside lobbyists for an aggressive, unorthodox attack on the federal sugar program just a year after a new farm bill was signed into law," says the Washington Post.

Foodmakers are in "a lobbying frenzy" over the administration's proposal to have the Nutrition Facts label on food packages include how much sugar was added during processing, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The agreement by Mexico to limit its shipments of sugar to the U.S. market will reduce the chances of sugar program costs, says the think tank Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.

Disqualifying sugary drinks, such as soda, from purchase under the food-stamp program would have little impact on consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, say USDA researchers.

Consumption of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables improved worldwide over the two decades ending in 2010, but "intake of unhealthy foods including processed meat and sweetened drinks" rose more rapidly, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Global Health.