Australian sugar consumption down page

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Sky News: Australians are losing their sweet tooth

"Australians are becoming increasingly sweet on savoury foods, with new data showing we're consuming over 25 per cent less sugar than 60 years ago.

A report shows sugar consumption in 2011 was 42kg per person, down from 57kg per person in 1951 when Australia's sweet tooth was at its sweetest.

The report - Sugar Consumption in Australia: A Statistical Update - also found there has been a sharp nine per cent decline since 2004 when every Australian, on average, was absorbing 46kg of sugar.

The report, compiled by Green Pool, has taken all aspects of sugar consumption into account.

'Our calculations... include household use, processed foods and beverages, takeaways, convenience foods and restaurant meals,' Green Pool spokesman Tom McNeill said."

[MaverickBris]

I saw this in the newspaper this morning - such troubling news - Queensland has such a massive SugarCane industry it really is up to us to consume more to save these poor farmers....I expected the Queensland Sugar Industry to spout out how healthy Sugar is and we should eat it regularly.

[Goosejuggler]

No to pavlova, yes to KFC.

[Iron Fireling]

Hmmmm one wonders if part of the decrease in sugar consumption is that many people think artificial sweeteners are healthier??!!

[Deonte]

So, I think this wealth must be utilized for some social work. I mean, there must be some
research and invented a new thing about some disease. Kew personal trainer
Making money is not the purpose.

[rory robertson(fmrfattie)]

It turns out that one growth area in the Australian economy is the production of misleading reports on sugar consumption!

This latest one follows hot on the heels of last year's bogus "Australian Paradox" paper published by two University of Sydney scientists.

On the new report "Sugar Consumption in Australia: A Statistical Update", someone sceptical would ask the obvious question, something like: "How did a modest Brisbane firm succeed in the extraordinarily difficult task of counting all the added sugar scattered here, there and everywhere across Australia's food supply, a task so immense that even the massively resourced Australian Bureau of Statistics failed badly, so badly in fact that it had to abandon its methodology as unreliable over a decade ago"?

The answer, of course, is that it did no such thing. Indeed, the report is a bit of a farce. Unfortunately, the report is based on a data series that was discontinued as unreliable by the Australian Bureau of Statistics [4306.0] a decade ago, and updated using a methodology abandoned as unreliable by the ABS a decade ago. Accordingly, the report is worse than useless, a nonsense that misleads rather than informs the public debate.

How did this happen? To some extent, we can let the authors "off the hook" because the "terms of reference" seem to have been fundamentally flawed: "In the absence of ABS collating such data, the Australian Sugar Refiners and CANEGROWERS [the industry's peak body] have commissioned an independent analysis ...to publish an updated set of statistics on sugar consumption in Australia using ABS methodology..." (https://greenpoolcommodities.com/new...stical-update/ ).

That is, the authors did what they were paid to do: update the data series that the ABS had abandoned as unreliable after 1998-99, specifically applying the outdated and broken methodology that the ABS had abandoned as unreliable. Put another way, the authors seem to have been sent on a fool's errand, whether they understood it or not.

So they dutifully dragged out a discredited series that had been discontinued as unreliable and updated it, applying as instructed the broken methodology that the ABS had abandoned as unreliable. It's complete nonsense, of course, but otherwise a job well done. Yep, a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out".

For those interested, all the issues are discussed in a fair bit of detail at http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf...ugarreport.pdf .

[peril]

Nice first post, Rory

[meat egg fruit n veg]

Sugar has been a big subject in the media over the last year. They talk about it in the newspapers and I've seen a few reports on the news about it. I see a lot of bus stop advertisements now for "sugar free" this and that all over the place. Lots of "sugar free" foods in the lolly section and the health food sections.

Maybe all this advertising has an effect on people? I dunno, its probably a guess.

[rory robertson(fmrfattie)]

Thanks "peril". (That name seems ominous!) Yes, I think I have demonstrated that the report's "new" sugar dataset is worse than useless. (Please, anyone, correct me if I'm wrong.)

Awkwardly, perusing other aspects of the report doesn't exactly boost perceptions of the document's overall credibility. Yes, it is very professional-looking - with lots of numbers that add up, and plenty of good charts - but check out the section I've "cut and pasted below:

Maybe I'm misreading but are the authors really - completely! - unaware that refined cane sugar or sucrose actually is one half fructose? Try this for size:

"11. The Role of Fructose

Fructose is often mentioned in the public debate on diet as being a
“new health problem”, and its usage “increasing rapidly in the
average diet”. Sugar (sucrose) and fructose are also often confused,
and critics often use the words sugar and fructose interchangeably.
Quite a lot of the recent diet literature has come from, and been
influenced by, US dietary trends, raising issues as to the relevance
for any discussion of sweetener usage in Australia.

Australia is different to the US. ...

Fructose is not produced in Australia (at least no current producers
were found – there was one producer for a short time in the 1990s,
but they no longer produce fructose). If it is, as claimed, in most
products on the supermarket shelf, then logically, any food producer
in Australia would have to import it. ABS data records only around
3,000 tonnes of crystalline fructose (and negligible HFCS) currently
being imported into Australia (see 3rd graph) – or around 0.13 kg per
person per year. Of course, there is fructose in some imported
products as a food ingredient, but anecdotally, it seems a lot less
than the significant quantities implied by critics. ..."
(P. 10, https://greenpoolcommodities.com/fil...e_Document.pdf )

Wow! The authors seem to think they have stumbled onto another "Australian Paradox"?!! Logically, where did all that fructose come from that now is sitting in those fructose-laden supermarket products if it wasn't imported?! I suppose I shouldn't laugh.

Is it just me, or does that section read as though the authors think that fructose and sucrose are completely different things, as though the cane sugar we eat in Australia has nothing to do with fructose, even though the latter is 50% of the former! (Which would be why many analysts - including me - often write "sugar/fructose", because the focus typically is on the "sweet poison" half of sugar, fructose, while the glucose half is assumed to be benign/neutral.)

Were you also surprised to read that "Fructose is not produced in Australia..."?! That's awkward! I wonder if someone might tap the authors of this commissioned report on the shoulder and tell them that, in fact, fully 50% of the output of the group paying the invoice for their shiny and unreasonably misleading report - that is, the "peak body for Australian sugarcane growers" - is fructose, and a chunk of that now sits inside those "products on the supermarket shelves". What are we to make of this section on "The Role of Fructose"? (Is it as clueless as it seems to me, or have I just made a complete goose of myself?)

Notwithstanding that I think that this new sugar report should not be taken seriously by serious participants in the current debate, I was not shocked to find that the University of Sydney embraced it lovingly at the earliest opportunity.

Say what you like about the high-profile nutritionists at the University of Sydney, but nobody is going to accuse them of wasting time separating the sheep from the goats: The Australian Paradox is confirmed: sugar intakes are falling |

If you get a chance to read (in the previous link) that ham-fisted criticism of me and my vigorous ongoing effort to encourage the correction or retraction of the deeply flawed "Australian Paradox" paper, please note I have what I think is a strong defence: To this day, neither the authors nor the journal involved have addressed the eye-popping errors I have documented in my Slides 9 and 10 at http://www.australianparadox.com/pdf...-SLIDESHOW.pdf .