Bitter rivals within the sweetener industry — that have been trying to “candy crush” each other in the courts and the court of public opinion for years now — have reached a toothsome truce.
A decade-long dispute and ongoing billion-dollar court battle between the sugar industry and corn-syrup refiners over dueling advertising claims has ended abruptly as both sides announced a settlement in the case.
Details of the dispute’s deal were not publicly disclosed. But what is public — nutrition content on packaged food labels — will become more important than ever.
The sugar industry filed a federal lawsuit in 2011 under the U.S. Lanham Act, alleging the corn refiners’ $130-million ad campaign from 2008 misled the market to believe that the two sweeteners were basically the same.
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In response, corn processors countersued. They charged that public claims by “Big Sugar” directly linking corn syrup to higher rates of cancer and obesity were untrue.
While it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out the rationale that drove the joint settlement, it’s clear the public will not get a definitive court decision as to which sweetener poses lesser health risks.
The billion-dollar court battle between the sugar industry and corn-syrup refiners has been settled behind closed doors — for now.
That will allow the cloying cold war between sugar and corn-syrup producers to continue unabated as they jockey for sugary supremacy in the American diet — to the dismay of some health experts.
“Picking one sweetener from another isn’t the real issue. We shouldn’t be consuming either in anywhere near the volumes Americans do. Excess sugars in any form are clinically linked to increased risk of diabetes,” Michael Kleinrock, research director at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, said in an interview with LifeZette.
“Simple carbohydrates or sugary sweeteners are clearly a problem if consumers are unable to practice a balanced diet. Clear population evidence suggests that Americans are struggling with that balance.”
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And there are societal costs that accompany that struggle.
A recent IMS Institute report, Medicines Use and Spending Shifts: A Review of the Use of Medicines in the U.S. in 2014, says health-care costs on treatments for diabetes reached $32.2 billion in 2014, increasing 30.5 percent on an invoice-price basis over 2013.
That represents the second highest growth rate among leading disease classes after hepatitis C.
“Nutrition education in the U.S. is failing to break through to people, and the collective diet of the country is not healthy,” said Kleinrock.
Related: The Dangerous Cookie Jar
“Food labeling in restaurants, school bans on sodas and junk food vending machines, food stamp reforms that encourage healthier options for low-income individuals — those are all positive steps toward better health that seek to reduce consumption of sugar or high fructose corn syrup,” he said. “Efforts to cut trans fats have worked to a great extent, but most attempts to curb sweeteners have been met with substantial opposition.”
While the legal opposition between the sweetener factions has ended as a result of this court settlement, the secret agreement will enable both sides to maintain their status quo regarding large-scale use of sweeteners.
That is, until this particular gastronomical gauntlet possibly gets picked up by Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, or the pack of presidential candidates on the campaign trail.
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