Stop Shrinking Candy and Start Reading Nutrition Labels

Britain is freaking the fuck out over sugar. Welcome to the club.

In a draft report released Thursday by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, Britons were urged to halve their daily sugar intake from ten percent to five percent of their overall calories — the equivalent of about five to eight teaspoons, depending on body weight.

Good luck with that. According to estimates, teens in the UK currently hover at about 15 percent, as does the average American.

With that in mind, Public Health England will reconsider its recommendations on fruit juice and smoothies, which also fall under SACN's new guidelines. Many people tend to forget that fruit juice can be just as sugar-laden as soda: A typical 250-milliliter serving of apple juice, for example, contains 26 grams of sugar, or about six teaspoons.

Additionally, members of the UK-based Food and Drink Federation signed a pledge last week to reduce individually wrapped single servings of confectionary to 250 calories by early 2016. Mondelēz International, the parent company of Toblerone, Cadbury, and Milka, promised a similar reduction in May—meaning that Cadbury's Dairy Milk "Bar & a Half" chocolate will soon disappear from shelves. (For scale, a standard Snickers bar contains exactly 250 calories and 27 grams of sugar, or about 6.75 teaspoons.)

In the United States, of course, the sugar war has been smoldering for years. Last week, New York City's embattled "soda ban" was struck down by an appeals court, effectively putting the city out of options for the law. Had the ban gone into effect, consumers still would have been able to burst their livers with overdoses of syrup disguised as soda—they would've just needed to buy multiple 16-ounce drinks, just as with those 250-calorie bars in the UK.

But the recent soda ban decision was more about legal sophistry than concern for effective public health legislation. In the majority opinion, Judge Eugene F. Pigott, Jr., wrote that the "New York City Board of Health…exceeded the scope of its regulatory authority," and suggested that the Board take up its soda problems with the City Council. But the Board previously (and successfully) banned the use of artificial trans fats and required chain restaurants to post calorie counts for menu items.

Of course, soda manufacturers were staunchly opposed to the ban, utilizing their deep pockets and influence to turn a public health issue into a libertarian cause for "beverage freedom." But there's more than just our precious liberty at stake: Soda sales have been on the decline in the US for several years, though the industry still sold 8.9 billion cases in 2013.

That money goes far. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an American nonprofit science advocacy organization, recently released a report that directly accuses food and beverage companies of obscuring scientific data and spreading misinformation on the detrimental effects of sugar. A sugar fact sheet posted to Nestlé's website in 2008, for example, concluded that "messages to reduce sugar consumption to prevent body weight gain, although seemingly plausible, are therefore contrary to the evidence." For Halloween in 2010, the the Sugar Association published a fact sheet that claimed "sugar adds to the quality of children's diet."

The UK-based NGO Action on Sugar wants its government to go even further by introducing a sugar tax, banning the marketing of unhealthy foods to children and junk food sports sponsorships, and reducing added sugars in food by 40 percent by 2020.

But if NYC's failed soda ban verged on nanny state territory—and, frankly, it did—a sugar tax might plunge headlong in. It remains to be seen how effective broad legislation is on eating habits, either in the US or the UK, but we shouldn't discount the absence of common sense and personal responsibility.

It doesn't help that scare-mongering headlines tell largely uninformed readers that sugar lurks like anthrax in even the most wholesome-seeming foods, making it difficult to separate the realities of cooking and the hysteria over added sugar. Salt, sugar, and fat are integral to certain foods because they carry or amplify flavor. Can you believe there's sugar in barbecue sauce? I sure as hell can, because it's there for a reason—but I don't drink it from a fucking mug.

We shouldn't need a video of Michael Pollan—bless his admirable, if privileged, ideals—looking aghast at the yogurt and the frozen dinners churned out God-knows-where. We should know that food is crap, just as we should know that dinners of ketchup and butter and spaghetti just about guarantee you a coronary event before your time.

We should read the nutrition label. That's why it's there.