The Public Relations program at Algonquin College blends public relations theory with practical experience in research, writing, editing, time and resource management. Big Sugars Sweet Little Lies Mother Jones. Skip to main content. Chris Buzelli. On a brisk spring Tuesday in 1. Sugar Association stepped up to the podium of a Chicago ballroom to accept the Oscar of the public relations world, the Silver Anvil award for excellence in the forging of public opinion. The trade group had recently pulled off one of the greatest turnarounds in PR history. For nearly a decade, the sugar industry had been buffeted by crisis after crisis as the media and the public soured on sugar and scientists began to view it as a likely cause of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to persuade public. How To Write A Comprehensive Public Relations Plan Part 1 By Craig Miyamoto, APR, Fellow PRSA The public relations plan is one of the most important documents you. Top community relations tips as well as strategies on community investment, public participation and community engagement and best practices. Industry ads claiming that eating sugar helped you lose weight had been called out by the Federal Trade Commission, and the Food and Drug Administration had launched a review of whether sugar was even safe to eat. Consumption had declined 1. As John JW Tatem Jr. Jack OConnell Jr., the Sugar Associations president and director of public relations, posed that day with their trophies, their smiles only hinted at the coup theyd just pulled off. Their winning campaign, crafted with the help of the prestigious public relations firm Carl Byoir Associates, had been prompted by a poll showing that consumers had come to see sugar as fattening, and that most doctors suspected it might exacerbate, if not cause, heart disease and diabetes. With an initial annual budget of nearly 8. Dixie Crystals, Domino, C H, Great Western, and other sugar brands, the association recruited a stable of medical and nutritional professionals to allay the publics fears, brought snack and beverage companies into the fold, and bankrolled scientific papers that contributed to a highly supportive FDA ruling, which, the Silver Anvil application boasted, made it unlikely that sugar will be subject to legislative restriction in coming years. The story of sugar, as Tatem told it, was one of a harmless product under attack by opportunists dedicated to exploiting the consuming public. Over the subsequent decades, it would be transformed from what the New York Times in 1. American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association approved it as part of a healthy diet. Research on the suspected links between sugar and chronic disease largely ground to a halt by the late 1. So effective were the Sugar Associations efforts that, to this day, no consensus exists about sugars potential dangers. On a brisk spring Tuesday in 1976, a pair of executives from the Sugar Association stepped up to the podium of a Chicago ballroom to accept the Oscar of the public. Public Relations Tactics Pdf' title='Public Relations Tactics Pdf' />
The industrys PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans consumption of caloric sweeteners, including table sugar sucrose and high fructose corn syrup HFCS. This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1. 97. 0, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled. The chart below uses sugar availability numbers rather than the USDAs speculative new consumption figures. Precisely how did the sugar industry engineer its turnaround The answer is found in more than 1,5. They show how Big Sugar used Big Tobacco style tactics to ensure that government agencies would dismiss troubling health claims against their products. Compared to the tobacco companies, which knew for a fact that their wares were deadly and spent billions of dollars trying to cover up that reality, the sugar industry had a relatively easy task. With the jury still out on sugars health effects, producers simply needed to make sure that the uncertainty lingered. But the goal was the same to safeguard sales by creating a body of evidence companies could deploy to counter any unfavorable research. For 4. 0 years, the sugar industrys priority has been to shed doubt on studies suggesting that its product makes people sick. This decades long effort to stack the scientific deck is why, today, the USDAs dietary guidelines only speak of sugar in vague generalities. Reduce the intake of calories from solid fats and added sugars. Its why the FDA insists that sugar is generally recognized as safe despite considerable evidence suggesting otherwise. Its why some scientists urgent calls for regulation of sugary products have been dead on arrival, and its whyabsent any federal leadershipNew York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg felt compelled to propose a ban on oversized sugary drinks that passed in September. In fact, a growing body of research suggests that sugar and its nearly chemically identical cousin, HFCS, may very well cause diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and that these chronic conditions would be far less prevalent if we significantly dialed back our consumption of added sugars. Advanced Email Extractor Pro Registration Cracked Feet more. Robert Lustig, a leading authority on pediatric obesity at the University of California San Francisco whose arguments Gary explored in a 2. New York Times Magazinecover story, made this case last February in the prestigious journal Nature. In an article titled The Toxic Truth About Sugar, Lustig and two colleagues observed that sucrose and HFCS are addictive in much the same way as cigarettes and alcohol, and that overconsumption of them is driving worldwide epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes the type associated with obesity. Sugar related diseases are costing America around 1. The fact that no confirmed scientific evidence links sugar to the death dealing diseasesis the lifeblood of the Sugar Association. The Sugar Association dusted off what has become its stock response The Lustig paper, it said, lacks the scientific evidence or consensus to support its claims, and its authors were irresponsible not to point out that the full body of science is inconclusive at best. This inconclusiveness, of course, is precisely what the Sugar Association has worked so assiduously to maintain. In confronting our critics, Tatem explained to his board of directors back in 1. This crucial point is the lifeblood of the association. Incredimail 2 Gold Crack. The Sugar Associationsearliest incarnation dates back to 1. Sugar Research Foundation to counter World War II sugar rationing propagandaHow Much Sugar Do You Need None declared one government pamphlet. In 1. 94. 7, producers rechristened their group the Sugar Association and launched a new PR division, Sugar Information Inc., which before long was touting sugar as a sensible new approach to weight control. In 1. Sugar Association spun off its research division as the International Sugar Research Foundation. Misconceptions concerning the causes of tooth decay, diabetes, and heart problems exist on a worldwide basis, explained a 1. ISRF recruiting brochure. As early as 1. 96. Sugar Association memos had acknowledged the potential links between sugar and chronic diseases, but at the time sugar executives had a more pressing problem Weight conscious Americans were switching in droves to diet sodasparticularly Diet Rite and Tabsweetened with cyclamate and saccharin. From 1. 96. 3 through 1. A dollars worth of sugar, ISRF vice president and research director John Hickson warned in an internal review, could be replaced with a dimes worth of sugar alternatives. If anyone can undersell you nine cents out of 1. Hickson told the New York Times in 1. By then, the sugar industry had doled out more than 6. Sugar Twin and Sucaryl. In 1. 96. 9, the FDA banned cyclamates in the United States based on a study suggesting they could cause bladder cancer in rats. Not long after, Hickson left the ISRF to work for the Cigar Research Council.