It is a suggestion that makes the soft drinks industry
(U. K. sales £ 8.6 billion in 2001) incandescent with rage, but the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (W. H. O.) has for the first time nailed it to the agenda in a ground-breaking draft report on obesity and nutrition. The report urges governments to clamp down on TV ads pushing ‘sugar-rich items’ to impressionable thirsty youngsters and consider slapping heavier taxes on them. It suggests that school vending machines should be turned into scrap metal.

This is all-out war. The W. H. O., concerned about the rising tide of obesity that is killing and debilitating millions in rich countries such as the U. K. and the U. S. A. and that is now edging into poor countries to co-exist obscenely with malnutrition, means business. The soft drinks industry, appalled at this interference with its global dominance, disputes not only the scientific evidence but W. H. O.’s right even to raise issues of taxes and advertising. For many years, the food industry has fought a largely successful battle to have us believe that couch potato culture is a bigger villain even than high-fat chips, burgers and chocolate bars in the increasingly porcine appearance of British youth. Children have been denied school playing fields and corralled in front of the TV, they argue. They have exchanged running in the streets for passive Internet roaming.

But the W. H. O. has now marched in where nanny once feared to tread, insisting that slothfulness is not all, and asserting that food and drink is an issue of public health—not just a matter of consumer choice. In naming and slamming sugar as well as fat, it is taking on corporations with more wealth, power and global reach than many small nations. The industry has gone ballistic.

"We are going to see the most astonishing public fight," says Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University. "It is going to be a straightforward war." For years, he says, industry has been successfully lobbying and operating behind the scenes to prevent the sort of confrontation that is now taking place. But the stratospheric surge in obesity, its first cousin, diabetes and other nutrition-related diseases has spurred the W. H. O. to act. "If the W. H. O. had not taken this on, it would have been derelict in its duties," says Professor Lang. "It is taking on people who have fought for 20-30 years denying evidence about the impact of diet on degenerative diseases and food-related cancers. They have argued this is nonsense. They have hired rent-a-professors and argued that it wasn’t true. They have gone down the lobbying route. They have gone down, above all, an ideological route, arguing that there are problems, but they are due to an individual’s mis-consumption."

The first strike has come from the U. S. A. where big business and the Bush Administration melt indistinguishably into one and where, in 1997, Americans spent more than $ 54 billion on 14 billion gallons of soft drinks. Babies are weaned on soda pop—a fifth of one- and two-year-olds drink a cup a day. The average teenage boy quaffs 19 ounces daily—more than a can and a half. Some 12 per cent of boys and 11 per cent of girls are obese. In the past 20 years, obesity levels in adolescents have tripled.

The U. S. Government registered a formal objection to the W. H. O. draft report, arguing that it had not proved its case. It said the report found "insufficient evidence to conclude that a causal link between soft drinks consumption and weight gain exists" and demanded that the offending words be "deleted or significantly revised."

This is curious, because—as Congressman Henry Waxman pointed out—the review which led the W. H. O. to its conclusion was co-authored by William Dietz, Director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity of the Centre For Disease Control and the U. S. Government’s leading obesity expert. Both Dr. Dietz and the U. S. Surgeon General have praised schools that ban soft drink machines—as has happened across Los Angeles.

The U. S. Government’s response—and its lobbying of EU governments to share its stance—is a powerful shot across the W. H. O. bows. But what many campaigners fear is not so much the public fracas as the subtler power-play of covert influence behind the scenes. The U. N. agencies, which have to listen to opinion from every quarter, are wide open to infiltration and manipulation. It happened when the W. H. O. took on the tobacco industry. An unpublished report obtained by The Guardian suggests it has been happening with the food industry too.

The report was compiled by a retired American public health academic named Norbert Hirschhorn who has written tomes on the secrets of the tobacco industry after delving into the archives set up during the litigation in the U. S. A. Those archives provided comprehensive evidence for a report to W. H. O. Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in July 2000 that the tobacco companies had succeeded in infiltrating the W. H. O. and were exerting "undue influence" over its policies on cigarettes. Professor Hirschhorn sought to discover whether similar tactics had been employed by sectors of the food industry owned by or linked to tobacco. His unpublished report, dated June 19, 2002, finds "that "undue influence" has indeed been exerted by the tobacco industry, its food subsidiaries and allies on food and nutrition policies. The tactics, he says, were to position the industry’s own toxicologists and other experts on W. H. O. and F. A. O. (Food and Agricultural Organisation) committees and to fund and support non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which would put forward their views. Funds were channelled through food companies to research and policy groups sympathetic to the industry. Libertarian think-tanks and writers who would denounce over-regulation and champion individual choice were given financial support. Hirschhorn pays particular attention to an organisation called the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) which was founded in 1978 by Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, General Foods, Kraft (owned by Philip Morris Tobacco) and Proctor & Gamble. Until 1991, it was led by Coca-Cola Vice-President Alex Malaspina, who negotiated for ILSI a position as an NGO "in official relations" with the W. H. O. and a specialised consultative status with the F. A. O. The environmental sciences division of ILSI worked closely with the tobacco industry. The report states that after the F. A. O./W. H. O. issued guidelines on nutrition in 1992, ILSI members congratulated themselves on steering the U. N. organisations away from any curbs on sugar consumption, in line with the position of the food industry. From the conference rooms of Geneva to the corridors of a British school, games of power and influence are being played out over what we eat and drink. Commercial interests are trying to influence both policy makers and pupils, with varying degrees of subtlety. Vending machines sell Coke and Tango, crisps and sweets in schools—a quick sugar fix for hungry kids and cash for the head to buy more books. Food companies sponsor educational worksheets and information booklets. Walker’s salt and fat-heavy crisps offer "books for schools" vouchers and Nestlé promises money for schools that collect packet tops from sugar-loaded cereals.

The Food Commission, which campaigns against these promotions, says the majority of British children consume more fat, sugar and salt than is recommended for an adult, and around nine per cent of boys and 13.5 per cent of girls in England are overweight. In 10 years, from 1984 to 1994, obesity in primary schoolchildren went up by 140 per cent.