INTHEBLACK October/November 2024 - Magazine - Page 47
“To go from a traditional sugar mill to one of these bio-precincts requires a
lot of investment. The mills, the growers, new investors, they’re all interested.
These investments are in multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars.”
HYWEL COOK, SUGAR RESEARCH AUSTRALIA
farm operators and regional communities,
costing jobs without being a silver bullet for
obesity reduction.
Viljoen disagrees. “Worldwide consensus
would not concur, with several other
jurisdictions already having imposed such
a tax. Balance is key,” he says.
SPOTLIGHT ON SUBSTITUTES
For decades, traditional sugar has also faced
competition from substitute sweeteners
that have been branded as “low calorie”,
including the artificial sweetener aspartame
and sugar alcohols, such as erythritol and
xylitol. Plant-based sweeteners such as
stevia, monk fruit and allulose are more
recent competitors.
Significantly, some sugar substitutes
are having to defend their own health
credentials. Aspartame has been used in a
range of food and beverage products since
the 1980s, including some diet drinks,
chewing gum, ice cream and yoghurt. In July
2023, aspartame was declared as “possibly
carcinogenic to humans” by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the
World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer
research arm.
In releasing the findings, Dr Francesco
Branca, director of the Department of
Nutrition and Food Safety for WHO, notes
that “the assessments of aspartame have
indicated that, while safety is not a major
concern at the doses which are commonly
used, potential effects have been described
that need to be investigated by more and
better studies”.
For now at least, the IARC concludes
that currently available data does not
warrant a change to the acceptable daily
intake of aspartame of 40mg/kg body weight.
Recent research has also raised some
concerns about erythritol, with a study
published in Nature Medicine pointing
to increased association with blood
clotting and cardiovascular disease.
In separate research to the aspartame
report, the WHO has also debunked
theories that artificial sweeteners can be
Monk fruit (dried luo han
guo) which is grown mostly
in southern Mainland China
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