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Big Sugar’s scandalous sweetheart deal with public health experts exposed

RT | February 12, 2015

British public health experts issuing guidance on obesity receive hundreds of thousands of pounds from the sugar industry, an investigation has found.

Funding from companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé has flowed into scientific research bodies such as the UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) for over a decade.

Scientists whose work was at least partly funded and sometimes fully funded by the sugar industry include Professor Susan Jebb, the government’s obesity tsar.

Leading scientists blamed the government’s funding cuts for forcing researchers into the arms of Big Sugar, while one doctor told RT the findings were “disturbing.”

The report comes at a time when medical experts say daily guidelines on sugar intake are misleading, with the average Briton consuming two to three times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended limit.

According to the BMJ’s investigation, one government-funded organization, the MRC’s Human Nutrition Research unit in Cambridge, received an average of £250,000 a year for the past decade from Big Sugar.

Other scientists received consultancy fees from Boots, Coca-Cola, Mars, Cereal Partners UK and Unilever. They have also sat on advisory boards for Coca-Cola, the Food and Drink Federation and the Institute of Grocery Distributors, the report claims.

Nutrition scientist Susan Jebb, who is the UK government’s adviser on obesity, received £1.37 million in industry funding between 2004 and 2015, according to the investigation.

This money came from food and retail companies including Cereal Partners UK, which operates under the Nestlé brand, Rank Hovis McDougal, Sainsbury’s, Coca-Cola’s Beverage Institute for Health and Wellbeing and Unilever.

In a statement published via the Science Media Centre, Jebb rejected the BMJ’s investigation.

“It refers to a series of studies in which I was involved which included funding from industry. None of these involve research into the effects of sugar on health,” she said.

“I have received no personal remuneration from any of these projects. All have been conducted according to all the MRC governance arrangements for working with industry and the industry involvement has been declared.”

Dr Aseem Malholtra, a cardiologist and Science Director at the medically led Action on Sugar, told RT the findings were “disturbing.”

“I think it’s quite disturbing. I think the public would be appalled that the people advising them on what they eat are receiving money from the food industry.”

“We know that biased funding for research is one of the root causes of problems within healthcare at the moment. Whether it’s food industry funding or pharmaceutical funding.”

Malholtra said the average UK citizen consumes 2-3 times the WHO’s recommended sugar intake.

“The labeling of sugar remains extremely misleading. The guidelines’ daily amount doesn’t distinguish between added sugars and what’s intrinsic to the product,” he said.

“The current sugar labeling suggests one could consume 22 teaspoons of sugar a day as part of your daily amount. The WHO advice is for 6 teaspoons per day.”

“My question is: what are the scientists doing turning a blind eye?”

Former SACN chair Alan Jackson blamed the government’s research funding cuts for pushing scientist towards industry money.

Universities are estimated to have lost over £460 million in government research funding between 2009-10 and 2012-13, a financial burden which has seen them turn to business for over £2 billion over the past decade.

Jackson said scientists were encouraged by the government to develop a “mixed portfolio of support” for their research which explicitly included help from industry.

“So most, if not all, researchers will have some form of industry support and funding and hence have potential conflicts of interest,” he told the BMJ.

“By the very nature of its complex roots and wide interdisciplinary engagement nutrition has particular vulnerabilities in this regard, but it is by no means unique to nutrition.”

READ MORE: Child obesity looms large, with 1/3 of European teenagers overweight

February 13, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Swiss, French call to bring home gold reserves as Dutch move 122 tons out of US

RT | November 28, 2014

The financial crisis in Europe is prompting some nations to repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands has moved $5 billion worth of gold from New York, and some are calling for similar action from France, Switzerland, and Germany.

An unmatched pace of money printing by major central banks has boosted concerns in European countries over the safety of their gold reserves abroad.

The Dutch central bank – De Nederlandsche Bank – was one of the latest to make the move. The bank announced last Friday that it moved a fifth of its total 612.5-metric-ton gold reserve from New York to Amsterdam earlier in November.

It was done in an effort to redistribute the gold stock in “a more balanced way,” and to boost public confidence, the bank explained.

“With this adjustment the Dutch Central Bank joins other banks that are keeping a larger share of their gold supply in their own country,” the bank said in a statement. “In addition to a more balanced division of the gold reserves…this may also contribute to a positive confidence effect with the public.”

Dutch gold reserves are now divided as follows: 31 percent in Amsterdam, 31 percent in New York, 20 percent in Ottawa, Canada and 18 percent in London.

Meanwhile, Switzerland has organized the ‘Save Our Swiss Gold’ referendum, which is taking place on November 30. If passed, it would force the Swiss National Bank to convert a fifth of its assets into gold and repatriate all of its reserves from vaults in the UK and Canada.

“The Swiss initiative is merely part of an increasing global scramble towards gold and away from the endless printing of money. Huge movements of gold are going on right now,” Koos Jansen, an Amsterdam-based gold analyst for the Singaporean precious metal dealer BullionStar, told the Guardian.

France has also recently joined in on the trend, with the leader of the far-right National Front party Marine Le Pen calling on the central bank to repatriate the country’s gold reserves.

In an open letter to the governor of the Banque de France, Christian Noyer, Le Pen also demanded an audit of 2,435 tons of physical gold inventory.

Germany tried and failed to adopt a similar path in early 2013 by announcing a plan to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the US and France.

The efforts fizzled out this summer, when it was announced that Germany decided to leave $635 billion worth of gold in US vaults.

Germany only keeps about a third of its gold at home. Forty-five percent is held in New York, 13 percent in London, 11 percent in Paris, and only 31 percent in the Bundesbank in Frankfurt.

READ MORE: No ‘gold rush’: Germany keeps reserves in the US

November 28, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment