Mar 25, 2014 – WHO and Sugar

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Health newsfeed for Tuesday, March 25, 2014

ANCHOR LEAD: THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION HAS WEIGHED IN ON SUGAR, ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS

Sugar seems to have replaced salt as the latest target for the diet police, and now the World Health Organization has provided new guidelines on just how much, or how little, of the stuff people should be consuming. Michael Klag, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the concern is warranted.

KLAG: Sugar has gotten a lot of attention recently and I think it’s because of the worldwide epidemic of diabetes. I think the WHO was trying to address this important public health problem by revising their recommendations about sugar. If you look here in America what we do it’s estimated that almost ¾ of Americans get more than 10% of their calories from sugar. That’s a lot of sugar. And the concern is if you eat a lot of sugar you’re also then not eating more nutritious food. :29

Klag says WHO guidelines are used to inform policy and may impact on manufacturing practices, where a lot of sugar is hidden in prepared foods. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.