NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA The Trouble With Sugar RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 4:03:03 ........................................................................ NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA THE TROUBLE WITH SUGAR RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 10:10:04 ........................................................................ BETSAN POWYS: A new product for children is about to hit the shelves. It's fun and it's fruity, or so it says. It's a strawberry mousse with added calcium and vitamins, and it's backed by a TV marketing campaign to sell it to children and their parents. How do we know? We made it, and every pot of "Fit and Fruity" is packed with sugar. That's four teaspoons of sugar per pot, so that's one for every lunch, so that's 22 spoons of sugar in a week. POWYS: Panorama is going into business. We're making food to show just how easy it is to market cheap sugar laden junk as healthy. But don’t worry, the industry is more than happy to defend it. We made this, we produced this precisely to show what you can get away with, and here you are, saying it's great. MARTIN PATERSON: I don’t think a child at home should not have a sugary pudding. POWYS: We investigate how easy it is to pack our food with sugar and how hard the sugar industry fights to keep it there. In Rome we uncover how a major international study of what we eat was knobbled. secretly paid for and hijacked by sugar interests, evidence that shocked watchdogs. Dr TIM LOBSTEIN: You've shown that in fact this material was deeply flawed. We had a science-based evidence revue that was funded by the sugar industry. POWYS: Tonight Panorama goes into food production to find out what exactly the industry is getting away with, and what we can convince you to buy. The Co-operation's headquarters in Manchester and it's a big day for Panorama. We're launching a brand new product that will hit the shelves this autumn. DAVID CROFT: Perhaps something that looks attractive to them but also to their parents. What sort of products might we be thinking of. I mean.. you know... we've seen… POWYS: The Co-op has a reputation for campaigning on food labelling and quality, but today is different. This is a chance for its top team leaders to show Panorama what can go on. CROFT: … marks the products in a way that we would campaign in terms of the sorts of labels that we feel are inappropriate but that we actually know still goes on. POWYS: The head of brands, David Croft, has agreed to help us create a lunchbox snack for children. The plan is to make a product that appears healthy, follows all the rules and regulations but is junk and bursting with sugar. I joined the team to find out how easy it is to market junk as 'good fresh food'. CO-OP TEAM: …cost as well because you can label it with fruit but you don’t have to put that much fruit in. I mean we could go down the route of a fruit source, so we could have an amount of fruit in there but we could also sort of bulk it out if we wanted to with other things such as.. you know.. sugar and stabilisers and starches. I think probably a mousse is better and it probably means we can put more sugar in it and that bulks it out a little bit more. POWYS: Do you have to say it's a mousse because as a parent, I think you'd think a yoghurt was healthier than a mousse. CO-OP TEAM: You could hide it on the back so you could have just your up front marketing, fancy, child- catching… POWYS: Fruity name. CO-OP TEAM: Yes… POWYS: So we're going for a strawberry mousse. To grab the parents there's added calcium and vitamins. For the children, cartoons, a free gift, but most of all – lots of sugar. CO-OP TEAM: This is a 125 gram pot, it's going to be about 20 odd grams of sugar which is a third or perhaps even a bit more, of a child's daily recommended allowance. CO-OP TEAM: In one pot? CO-OP TEAM: In one small pot. CROFT: We've got to have fruit in the name, haven't we. CO-OP TEAM: Or 'fruity'. CO-OP TEAM: Yeah, there's no fruit in the product. (laughter) CROFT: We don’t have to have fruit in the product just to have it in the name. We're going to end up calling it Fit and Fruity or something like that. CO-OP TEAM: That sounds alright. POWYS: I mean this product has nothing to do with fitness, we're clear about that. We can call it Fit and Fruity. CROFT: It's a marketing name. CO-OP TEAM: But this is just the marketing name, its not the product description, the legal label… POWYS: But it's what mum sees when she buys it. CO-OP TEAM: Sure, but it's not its proper name. POWYS: So really we can call it anything we like. CO-OP TEAM: You can call it anything you like. CO-OP TEAM: Yeah. Fit and Fruity it is then. POWYS: Kerris Baily is 4 years old and 6 ½ stone. Her doctor's warned she has to lose weight, if she doesn’t then Kerris then Kerris is just one of many overweight children who face losing up to 9 years of their lives. TINA BAILEY It is coming off, slowly but surely. She doesn't like being chunky. People all stare at her and she says: "Mum, they're staring at me because I'm fat" and she is aware of it now. People have said things, you know: "Adults and children call me names, fatso" and all that. So she doesn't want to be fat, she wants to be thin because she wants to be a ballerina. POWYS: A few years ago Kerris would have been an exception. Now one in three children in the UK are overweight or obese. Just ten years ago it was half that number. Diet sheets help. Her mother is trying to cook more meals to use fresh foods. All the same Kerris is drawn to the brightest labels. The foods she's seen advertised on television or starring her favourite characters. TINA: Kerris likes chocolate yogurts and all the expensive cereals, the Cocoa Pops and Frosties, all the things that really taste nice. Sometimes they'll say: "Oh please, please, can we just have one box?" So I might buy it, you know, if I'm a little bit.. ah.. better off. POWYS: It's that pester power we want to harness to sell Panorama's product. We're planning to market it, put it on the shelves and find out if we can get it past parents who try to keep their children's diet healthy. But first we have to make it. The plan is to produce just one batch of our Fit and Fruity Mousse, just enough to put it to the test. There are 26 grams of sugar, that's over 4 teaspoonfuls in each pot. Just 2% fruit and a list of other ingredients we're not so proud of, hydrogenated vegetable oil, pectin acid, but don’t think we've dreamed up the worst product possible. You could find a mousse just like this on any supermarket shelf. Our own sugar packed product is ready to go. Processed foods, fizzy drinks, children's cereals, yoghurts, even baked beans and soups, we consume over 2 million tons of sugar every year. But the sugar industry fights hard to deny that this has any link to obesity to fend off growing evidence that sugar is linked to a host of diseases including diabetes. It's an industry with a fierce reputation. Dr TIM LOBSTEIN Director, Food Commission The industry's tactic is to undermine all that evidence as much as possible. They will put up scientists who offer contrary evidence, they will undermine the credibility of a good scientist, they will fudge and offer contrary evidence to delay any decisions they're making. They use a whole range of tactics and the result of that is that governments do back off and don’t make the strong statements that they should be making. POWYS: And while governments back off, we can get away with packing as much sugar as we like into every pot of fit and fruity. Denying evidence that sugar is harmful to health has always been at the heart of the industry's defence. But for six years they relied on one crucial piece of positive science, a PR coup for sugar that stood unchallenged until now. We'll find out how sugar interests secretly funded a key meeting of nutrition experts who met in Rome to establish definitive conclusions about the effect of sugar and other carbohydrates on our health, how those experts have no idea where the money was coming from, nor just what influence that money bought. The 1998 Expert Consultation on Carbohydrates was a joint venture. It was held by the World Health Organisation and the lead partner the Food and Agriculture Organisation, both part of United Nations. LOBSTEIN: We could see immediately after the consultation was undertaken that they were going to use this for PR purposes and they did. Huge press releases, stories in national newspapers came out supporting the sugar industry's views based on what was supposed to be an independent review of the science. POWYS: And the outcome was a victory for sugar, a press release announcing: "Good news for kids, experts see no harm in sugar" was a dream caption. The headlines were glowing – THE TIMES A spoonful of sugar 'helps healthy diet' - to the astonishment of many of the experts themselves. They'd come to Rome not to exonerate sugar but to make vital decisions, like how much carbohydrate including sugar should we be eating. JIM MANN Professor of Human Nutrition University of Otago, New Zealand It really did matter. People wanted to know about sugar. How good was dietary fibre protecting against certain diseases, was sugar detrimental to human health. These were the kind of questions people really hoped to get out of the consultation. POWYS: Jim Mann, a high respected nutritionist and one of the experts involved felt from the start their integrity and independence was under pressure. JIM MANN: When we arrived some of us were summoned by one of the officials who was involved in the organisation of the consultation, and told very clearly that it would be inappropriate for us to say anything bad about sugar in relation to human health, that this would have profound political implications and that we simply should not do so. POWYS: I mean it was that clear? MANN: It was unequivocally clear. POWYS: So you'd been told essentially to lay off sugar. MANN: We had been told to lay off sugar, correct. POWYS: Another of the team invited to Rome sensed that the interests of science weren't always the driving force. Whenever sugar was mentioned, Professor John Cummings recalls how one official, there to observe, tried to block the debate. JOHN CUMMINGS Professor of Gastroenterology Ninewells Hospital & Medical School, Dundee I was very surprised when he came immediately to the defence of sugar during the consultation. I couldn't really understand why he did because normally these officials sit and listen and just sort of prod you when they think something needs doing but this was quite amazing. POWYS: What the experts at this critical meeting weren't to know was that the sugar industry was paying for them to be in Rome. But Panorama discovered a series of documents which show exactly where the money came from. The World Sugar Research Organisation is funded by the sugar industry. It's based in Reading and it paid $20,000 towards the consultation. "WSRO will be pleased to contribute the sum of $20,000" ILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute is an American research group paid for by food companies including Tate and Lyle. It put in $40,000. "ILSI is willing to commit $40,000" ILSI was also invited to suggest who might sit on the consultation - "Your suggestions for experts to be involved are most appreciated…" - it was ILSI who nominated the chairman months before the experts ever met. What we've been shown is that the funding came from two other organisations, the World Sugar Research Organisation and ILSI. MANN: Well there was no indication whatsoever that this was the case at the time, and my guess would be that I certainly, and probably my colleagues, would not have been prepared to be involved with such an activity had it been funded by these organisations. POWYS: So you wouldn't have done it. MANN: Under no circumstances. POWYS: Why not? MANN: Because I believe that it would be impossible to produce an unbiased report when the source of funding came from groups with clearly vested interests. POWYS: Unknown to the experts both those groups were shown and commented on the background papers, and even the draft agenda. Remarkably, behind this secret deal was the Food and Agriculture Organisation's head of food and nutrition, John Lupien. They were invited to provide the names of experts who might take part in the consultation and they were very happy to do so. This is to the World Sugar Research Organisation asking them specifically for the names of experts. They were also sent the draft of the proposed agenda. Would you regard that as irregular? MANN: I would regard it as irregular, totally inappropriate and incompatible with the way international agencies, particularly agencies of the United Nations should work. POWYS: And you were never told that this was the situation? MANN: We were never told that this was the situation. CUMMINGS: What is this? This is a letter from 1996 to Dr Lupien. "Pleased to contribute $20,000 to the programme." I'm absolutely amazed at that. I'm totally amazed. That's absolutely astonishing. I mean I just.. I can't believe that would happen. I mean the sums of money are trivial as well. I mean why would FAO compromise its integrity for $40,000? It's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. It's not in anybody's interests at all, not even in the sugar industry's interests. It's outrageous, I mean it's absolutely appalling if that… I mean that is absolutely appalling. POWYS: John Cummins is equally adamant he wouldn't have taken part had he known the deal to accept sugar money. Here we are: "The World Sugar Research Organisation have now received a number of names of experts" and he presumably forwards those to Dr Lupien. CUMMINGS: They're more than reeking here of influence. I mean this is full blown, full frontal attack, isn't it. I mean it's amazing, right from.. for the year before they were doing everything they could to ensure that they set the agenda. POWYS: And on that agenda in Rome was one crucial decision about what we eat. A guideline for governments around the world to consider. The experts were asked to agree on a clear recommendation of how much carbohydrate including sugar we should have in our daily diet. They decided it should be no less than 55% but no more than 75. They then left Rome. When the written report appeared the upper limit had gone. Jim Mann complained that a failure to mention a top limit on carbohydrate or any limit on sugar was open to misinterpretation and abuse. MANN: I think it would clearly be to the advantage of the industry not to have an upper limit because increasingly the industry are producing food products which are reduced in fat, particularly saturated fat, and one way of compensating for fat is to increase the amount of sugar. So obviously if there is no upper limit of sugar, one can add sugar with impunity into a whole range of food products. I'm not very happy about this. I mean I feel that I and my colleagues have been severely compromised and I think I would want a very clear, not apology but explanation from FAO and an undertaking that the checks and balances are in place that this could never ever happen again . POWYS: The Food and Agriculture Organisation is seen as a neutral source of expertise for nations the world over, but what about the consultation it organised? The man in charge was in the dark too. Did you know that the money had come from he World Sugar Research Organisation and ILSI? HARTWIG de HAEN Assistant Director-General Food and Agriculture Organisation I don’t remember that. I don’t think I knew, and it hasn't come to my attention, since it hasn't been an issue of that importance. POWYS: Have you seen these documents because what they show is that it wasn't just the funding that came from these two organisations, they nominated experts, they nominated the chairman, a key role. They got to see the background papers before the experts did, they got to comment on them, they got to comment on the agenda for the week. Did you know that? HARTIWIG de HAEN: No, I didn't. If the funding was accepted together with influence of the choice of experts or of the wording of the report, then it's unacceptable, that's true, yes. POWYS: Not only was there influence. In an email to the international Life Sciences Institute, one of the groups providing the funds, the Food and Agriculture official makes clear his resolve to keep ILSI sweet. It says: "I'm aware that ILSI and others are somewhat anxious about the focus and ultimately the outcome of this consultation, and I'm hoping your input into this background paper will be reassuring." JIM MANN Professor of Human Nutrition University of Otago, New Zealand Well it can only mean one thing I think and that is the presupposition that there was going to be nothing adverse said about sugar. An entirely inappropriate statement, in fact inappropriate is probably too mild a word to use in that situation. POWYS: Let me read you one other sentence. This is from an FAO official to ILSI. "I'm aware that ILSI and others are somewhat anxious about the focus and ultimately the outcome of this consultation and I'm hoping that your (ILSI's) input will be reassuring." What does that mean to you? HARTWIG de HAEN: Well of course this is not acceptable. But I am not sure where you quote from. POWYS: Well I'm quoting from an email, here it is here. It's from an official here whom we wont name but it's to ILSI and there it is there. What does reassuring mean to you Doctor de Haen? HARTWIG de HAEN: Reassuring sounds like a kind of promise that the outcome would not disappoint. POWYS: And it didn't. As we know, it got the industry the sort of headlines they could barely have hoped for. THE TIMES A spoonful of sugar 'helps healthy diet' Dr TIM LOBSTEIN Director, Food Commission They must have got a huge bargain out of this. If they paid just $60,000 for a product like this and got the publicity they got they were laughing. Public health policy makers have relied on these independent reviews of what is or isn't a good diet to eat, and this was an example where they've relied on this sort of material. You've shown that in fact this material was deeply flawed. We had a science-based evidence review that was funded by the sugar industry and yet hailed as somehow an independent review. That's simply not good enough. We relied on it and now we find it's flawed. It's got to change. POWYS: This week John Lupien told us he believed all UN guidelines had been followed, and that not disclosing funding was routine Food and Agriculture Organisation practise. But faced with Panorama's evidence the FAO disputes what it's former director of food and nutrition has said: "It's as though there were no concrete guidelines in place at the time, and it wasn’t illegal. Commonsense dictated the unusual source of funding should have been revealed." The wording of the report written by a consult after the experts left Rome had allowed for: "relative ease of misinterpretation." In view of our revelations the FAO now intends urgently to convene a new expert consultation. It's immediately suspended cooperation with ILSI and is looking into whether any action could be taken against individuals who compromised the reputation of the organisation. ILSI say they gave the money in good faith in an effort to support the best science possible. The World Sugar Research Organisation declined to comment. For the past six years the industry has got away with using the Rome report to argue against limiting how much sugar we eat, how much governments allow in our food. That's not good news for out health. But for Panorama's venture, for Fit and Fruity, it's a license to shove in the sugar. The product is ready to go, but it wont sell itself. We need a marketing campaign. A cartoon is a must. The face of Fit and Fruity is taking shape. But if it's going to appeal to children and get past the health conscious parents then it has to make an impact. That means a television advert. We decided to spearhead our campaign with a simple 10 second ad., the kind that fills the screen every Saturday morning. It's low on information high on hype. [TV Avert] The cool new mousse especially for kids. Fit and Fruity, it's fantastic. That's great. POWYS: Back to the Co-op, what do they think? CO-OP: I think it looks really good and it's really going to stand out well in the chiller cabinet with the deep pink and the red, and the cartoon's really eye-catching for the kids. CO-OP: Yeah. CO-OP: It looks pretty trendy in terms of the graphics so I think it's good. CO-OP: Well we've used the cartoon characters… POWYS: David Croft and his team from the Co-op are helping us make Fit and Fruity, they're doing it for one reason only, to show how some parts of the industry make the most of the lack of regulation around food labelling. CROFT: And tucked away in the back we've got the nutrition. What we've actually done has been quite up front and we've put the amount of sugar that's in the carbohydrates on the nutrition panel and for each 125 gram pot you get 26 grams of sugar, that's an awful lot of sugar there. The ingredients are there and the actual legal name is hidden away on the backing the way that we described. As you can see, just some free giveaway Frisbees that we can just throw around the room later, hours of endless fun, and try and get the right message over in terms of delivering on the healthiness of it, the food of it, and hopefully mixing and matching both appeal to children and also appeal to parents. CO-OP: And we've got the sort of vitamins and calcium and that real strawberry which I think is really good at the bottom on the front of the pack. CROFT: Yes, I think the front selling place is quite strong. We've got a TV advert as well. [TV Advert] Fit and Fruity, the cool new mousse especially for kids. It's fun, it's fruity, and there's a free thick and fruity Frisbee with every pack. Fit and Fruity, it's fantastic. POWYS: So tomorrow is the big day. We've created a high sugar product with next to no fruit in it. We want to find out whether our marketing will persuade people who try to avoid junk that Fit and Fruity is worth buying, or will we find they're too clued up. CROFT: Yeah, it just reinforces it, doesn't it. Okay. That's great. MARTIN PATERSON Deputy Director General Food and Drink Federation The public are more health conscious, they're looking for choices, they're looking for lower fat choices, lower sugar, lower salt, and of course the industry is responding to that. LOBSTEIN: The industry, as far as I can see, hasn't cut back one jot on the amount of sugar it's been selling to us. What it takes out of the baked beans, it'll put into the pizza so you'll be eating that sugar one way or another. POWYS: Geneva May this year and once again sugar is on the attack. This time the battleground is the World Health Organisation. On the agenda is their global strategy to combat obesity. A blueprint for action for governments worldwide to follow. Fat strategy has linked sugar to obesity, and included evidence that we should limit how much of it we eat. If it goes through, then the industry's days of spinning the positive findings in Rome, of using it to deny sugar is harmful to health, will be over. The man behind the strategy is Derek Yach. It should be a big week for him, instead, even before the strategy is discussed, he's packing his bags and moving on. Removed from his job leading the assault on obesity and sidelined, he has few doubts that taking on the food and sugar lobbies marked him out. DEREK YACH Former Executive Director World Health Organization I was physically shifted out of an office with strong secretarial and administrative support management of about 250 staff and the next day moved into an office which was very obscurely placed, difficult to find, no secretarial support, impossible find my mail. Colleagues, friends, people in government that there were pressures, particularly from some of the US interests which preferred to have me no longer as close to the food related issues as I had been. POWYS: Just this week came evidence he was right. A leaked email revealed how the World Sugar Research Organisation planned to make the most of Derek Yak's departure. With the man they described as "hostile" gone, they now hoped sponsorship would buy them influence in Geneva. But whether Derek Yach was in or out, the fight over the strategy report was still on. YACH: They must have paid millions to lobbyists to try and stop the report ever coming out. They went to the director generals both of WHO and FAO almost on the eve of its release and threaten that WHO would lose some of their funds, large amounts of their funds, and got US senators to sign their names onto the letters where those threats were made. POWYS: At this May's World Health Assembly the battle comes to a head. The signs are that big sugar's attack is paying off. PHILIP JAMES: I have a very clear perception from talking to various ministers that the global strategy was blown up and will not be passed. POWYS: Public health campaigners are out in force, they support the science behind the strategy and the recommendation that no more than 10% of our calories should come from sugar. They doubt it will be adopted. JAMES: I agree completely. The idea that the global strategy is going through as such is not on. POWYS: In town too, the food industry. They may be all smiles now but behind the scenes, they, like sugar, were ready for a fight. YACH: One of the most explicit examples of efforts to distort or stop the policy was during the World Health Assembly about 2 years ago. One of the well-known diplomats in the Geneva circle approached me very clearly, very aggressively and said: "You'd better realise that the food industry is a trillion dollar industry, don’t mess with that." POWYS: That man was Dan Spiegel. Paid as a lobbyist by American food companies he wouldn't be interviewed, but told us he'd just been stating his case robustly. But it's sugar that has most to lose. If the strategy's adopted unchanged, then the Rome Report, so much loved by the sugar lobby, will be history. The 10% limit on sugar in our diet will have been accepted by 92 nations, not a prospect the industry or sugar producing countries will take without a fight. WHO SPEAKER: There was a proposal for the limitation of sugar intake to less than 10%. However, this was irrational and not scientifically based. POWYS: Under pressure from sugar it looks as though governments intend to back off – again. Professor PHILIP JAMES Chairman, International Obesity TaskForce It's been quite extraordinary what's been going on in the last hour actually because we've had a whole series of apparently wonderful accolades for the strategy: "But, Mr President, I have just a few concerns" and then the few concerns are devastating proposals which have implications which would make the strategy essentially meaningless and we'll end up with nice little policies telling you and me that you're to have "just a bit less sugar and a little more balanced diet" the nonsense that's gone on since the Second World War during which time we've had this vast epidemic of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. POWYS: He turns out to be right. The strategy is adopted but only when the reference to limiting sugar intake, that 10% figure, is dropped from the text. It's a blow for food campaigners. Dr TIM LOBSTEIN Director, Food Commission Governments use information from places like the World Health Organisation to influence labelling of food as well as health standards, and I'm afraid that unless governments take much more seriously the threat that industry captures its own scientists and presents its own research as if it's somehow neutral, unless we get the governments to dismiss that approach to science we're going to be stuck with this for another decade to come. POWYS: The Department of Health has just announced it intends to put some effort into targeting how much sugar we eat. How far they're prepared to go to take on the sugar lobby remains to be seen. But for now Panorama's product is ready to hit the shelves. One stall, one fridge display and one chance to see if Fit and Fruity with its free Frisbee will sell. Will parents on the lookout for fresh healthy food be tempted by our sugary mousse. We've gathered a group of children and their mothers, but only mum knows we're filming on our cameras and the store's CCTV system. She's been told to let the child take the lead as they go shopping. But first we're showing each child ten minutes of typical Saturday morning television, cartoons, adverts, including ours for Fit and Fruity. [TV Advert] Especially for kids, Fit and Fruity, it's fantastic. POWYS: But will they go for it? It's not a good start. MUM: What else David? Do you want something else? DAVID: No. POWYS: The first pair is not interested. MUM: You like them, don’t you. You like yogurt. Have a look at all of them. POWYS: But it's better news with group two. GIRL: Can I have these? These were on the adverts. MUM: Those ones. Fit and Fruity? Okay. Right. POWYS: It's the same story with group three. GIRL: These are them ones on the television. MUM: What, you want those? GIRL1: Mmm. GIRL2: Yeah, we saw them ones on the telly. GIRL1: Then get another pack. Then get another pack. MUM: Yeah, are they all the same flavour? GIRL: Yeah. POWYS: Tell me what you make of Fit and Fruity. MARTIN PATERSON: Well it says it's got carbohydrates of which sugar.. it says the amount per 100 grams. It says the amount per pot. It says it's got a certain amount of fat, it says it's got a certain amount of protein. That's a pretty clear label. POWYS: It's called Fit and Fruity. PATERSON: Your point being? POWYS: That it has nothing to do with fitness and very little to do with fruit. It has an awful lot to do with hydrogenated vegetable oil and sugar. MARTIN PATERSON Deputy Director General Food and Drink Federation Well I think that the amount of calories that the child needs to get through the day probably requires it to take in a certain amount of fat, take in a certain amount of sugar. A child should not live exclusively on fit and fruity deserts or indeed any other desert. POWYS: Back in the shop - and though group 4 and 5 are no's - something we hadn't bargained for, customers who aren't part of the test at all are putting Fit and Fruity in their baskets. Child 6 sees it straight away. BOY: Fit and Fruity. MUM: What's Fit and Fruity. BOY: You get a free Frisbee. MUM: What is it? It's a yogurt. BOY: I love it. MUM: Yeah, you can try it, you can have a yogurt. POWYS: Seven and eight say no. But more and more customers are going for Fit and Fruity. All in all a success, despite huge competition Fit and Fruity has made its mark. Do you see anything wrong with this product at all? PATERSON: Not at all, it's a sugary desert. Deserts tend to be sugary. POWYS: It's called Fit and Fruity, it gives the impression of being a yogurt and the reason we know is that we made this. We produced this precisely to show what you can get away with and here you are saying it's great. You have no problem with it whatsoever. PATERSON: I don’t think a child at all should not have a sugary pudding. I don’t see a problem with that. POWYS: I'm suggesting that they should know that they're having a sugary pudding. PATERSON: Well I suggest to you that if you buy a sugary pudding in a pot, you probably know it's a sugary pudding. If you don’t know the exact amounts, and if you need to know the exact amounts, the information is there on the label. LOBSTEIN: If it's a sugary pudding in a pot it shouldn't be calling itself fit. And the fruit content I can't quite see the print on this but I imagine it's not going to be more than about 5% of the product. POWYS: It's 2%. LOBSTEIN: It's 2% of the product! Well that's even worse. To me this is neither fit nor fruity and is what I would call a deceptive label. POWYS: Deceptive? Maybe, but perfectly legal. So did these mothers think our label was pretty clear? Did they know they were buying a sugary pudding? MUM1: That just looks like a strawberry yogurt. Now they need to obviously put mousse on more bigger because… MUM2: So where does it say mousse? MUM3: It's actually there, just on the instructions at the back, strawberry mousse. MUM4: The fact it's called Fit and Fruity, you know.. if you don’t take a very close look at what's in it or whatever, it does appeal because it sounds good, doesn't it. Fit and Fruity. And it is a nice package. POWYS: But 4 ½ teaspoons of sugar per pot. If they took two, which they might have done, that would be their sugar intake for the day. MUM5: That's a lot, much too much. MUM6: You can't give a reasoned choice if you don’t really understand what they're putting on their packaging. It's down to them to help the parents. I mean I know they're not going to because they just want to sell their product, don’t they. But really, we need it to be.. well easier to understand and then we can make a reasoned choice. MUM7: Now you tell me how much sugar is in one of those, I wouldn't buy it. So.. I would have bought it otherwise, but now you've told me, I wouldn't buy it. KERRIS: Oh I like all the cake. MUM: Oh I know you like all the cakes, we're not buying them though. KERRIS: Ohhhh…. POWYS: Saying no every now and then to children like Kerris Bailey helps, but it wont solve the obesity problem. That can't be dismissed, not put down to the few who just can't say no. KERRIS: That's what I want.. that's what I was talking about. MUM: What? POWYS: Because of obesity the stark fact is that for the first time in 100 years children's life expectancy is likely to fall. That means in some cases the simple maths says parents will outlive their children. TINA BAILEY I don’t want her to lose weight, I want her to grow into her weight, that’s what I want her to do. I don’t want her to lose weight, it doesn't matter that she doesn't lose weight, as long as she doesn't put any on and she can manage to grow up.. you know.. that'd be great, just to be a normal child without people picking on her and calling her names. POWYS: Food companies say they're listening. A white paper expected soon will set out what the government wants them to do. For the industry it's an anxious wait. For government a test of its resolve to take on a lobby that's shown how hard it's prepared to fight. PATERSON: There's no use whatsoever trying to apply untested theory to the way a nation's food supply is delivered, it's too delicate and too sensitive an issue to do that so we've got to move with great caution, with great care and deliberation, and that's something that we think is happening at the moment. LOBSTEIN: We would like that white paper to give the industry a good kicking to tell it that it's got to pull its act together, it's got to be much more responsible how it advertises, how it labels, how it promotes its products and what the formulas are in those products. Take some of the sugar out for heaven's sake. We fear the white paper wont say anything like that. It'll offer a few choicey little things, like consumers should be given more choice about this and that. It's not good enough. POWYS: The evidence against sugar is mounting. We're eating too much and it's harming our health. Persuading us to listen will be hard enough, getting big sugar to give up its big battle with science may be harder still. Next week on Panorama Rageh Omar, in his first report in the UK for seven years, investigates why so many children are carrying and using knives. If you want to comment on tonight's programme visit our website at bbc.co.uk/panorama. _________ CREDITS Reporter BETSAN POWYS Camera ALEX HANSEN MARTIN LIGHTENING Sound TIM DAY MARTIN TURNER VT Editor BOYD NAGLE Colourist STEVE LUCAS Dubbing Mixer ANDREW SEARS Production Co-ordinators BETHAN HARDY KAREN HOOPER Post-Production Co-ordinator LIBBY HAND Production Manager CAROLINE HARRIS Web Producer ADAM FLINTER Film Research KATE REDMAN Graphic Design ALEX NEWBURY LYNN WILSON Assistant Producer GARETH BRYER Associate Producer GREG MYERS Film Editor ROBERT MOORE Producer HUW MARKS Executive Producer For BBC Wales KAREN VOISEY Unit Manager Maria Ellis Deputy Editors ANDREW BELL FRANK SIMMONDS Editor Mike Robinson 15 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Transcribed by 1-Stop Express, 3 Southwick Mews, London W2 1JG Email: panorama@bbc.co.uk