KANSAS CITY — At one level, the campaign against sugar, now entering a new stage of intensity, may be described as harmless. After all, sugar is not a nutrient-dense food, and rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes continue to climb. The nutritionist community’s call to limit added sugars in the diet sounds like common sense. In fact, the manner in which the anti-sugar crusade is being pursued and its justification should be of concern to grain-based foods executives.

The latest “front” for the campaign was the subject of a presentation by Courtney Gaine earlier this month at the International Sweetener Symposium in Seattle. Mandatory front-of-package labeling requirements for added sugars, together with sodium and saturated fat, are likely to be issued this fall by the Food and Drug Administration, said Gaine, who is president and chief executive officer of The Sugar Association.

She said front-of-package labeling was only one of several tools under consideration by the FDA in its efforts to curtail sugar intake, an effort that appears grounded more strongly in zealotry than science.

“The FDA is moving forward quickly without evidence that it (FOP labeling) really works,” Gaine said. “That’s a little scary.”

Describing Robert M. Califf, MD, a cardiologist and the FDA’s commissioner, as a crusader against sugar would be no overstatement. “I’m a radical enthusiast” for FOP labeling, he said at a virtual sugar-reduction summit hosted in 2023 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Making an inapt comparison of the FDA’s sugar-reduction aspirations to what has transpired over the past decade with trans fats, Califf expressed the hope FOP labeling will prompt food companies to reformulate sugar out of food products.

To her doubts about the FDA’s approach, Gaine brings both statistics related to sugar intake trends in the United States and how similar efforts are playing out in other global markets. In Mexico, for example, the percentage of the population that is overweight or has diabetes continues to climb, even after the imposition 10 years ago of a tax on sweetened beverages and the mandating in 2020 of FOP labeling. In the first years after food reforms were adopted in Chile, demand for products with added sugar tumbled and obesity rates jumped 36%, Gaine said.

She cited similar data in the United States, showing a steep downward drop in intake of caloric sweeteners over the past quarter century coupled with ever rising rates of obesity among adults and children. Per capita sugar consumption is currently about where it stood in the mid-80s, when obesity rates for children and adults were about half current levels.

Beyond the aggregated data, Glenn Gaesser, PhD, a professor at Arizona State University, for many years has tracked and cited data showing carbohydrates and sugar intake are associated inversely with body weight. Gaesser, who leads the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Grain Foods Foundation, has supported his contention with data from studies published in Obesity Reviews, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Attacking sugar without a holistic look at the diet and total caloric intake has yet to prove successful. One would think rigorous research conducted to prove the effectiveness of GLP-1 drugs in promoting weight reduction would give public health officials pause when it comes to mandating policies underpinned by shaky science.

As the weakness of the case for focusing on sugar becomes clearer, the efforts against sugar are only intensifying, and the stakes for grain-based foods are great. Grain-based foods are the second largest dietary source of added sugar, accounting for about a quarter and exceeded only by beverages, according to the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Just as important, the employment of squishy science to attack sugar raises the question of what target will follow. Ultra-processed foods, the ill-defined category that often includes flour-based foods, seem a likely focus. Everyone, including the milling and baking industries, has a strong stake in insisting nutrition policy is firmly grounded in sound science.