Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thank you Jeffrey and Carrie for the opportunity to join the speaker panel for this event, and to draw to a close a very interesting day.   Now I have worked for, in and with the food industry for my entire career, so it won’t surprise you if I say that we’ve seen much of what has been described today before.

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Here is the cover of an edition of New Scientist from September 2001 warning that we should not eat any more sugar until we’d read about Syndrome 'X' (metabolic syndrome).  

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In the seventies, John Yudkin’s book introduced us to the concept of sugar as 'Pure, White and Deadly' and the single most important risk factor for our health (sound familiar?).

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And, of course, it’s not just health issues that have threatened to consign sugar to the back-waters. This is an ad from the turn of the last (twentieth) century. Here the busty symbol of the 20th century is seeing off her elderly predecessor with the announcement of a new sweetener (actually saccharin) which is not only cheaper than sugar but will mean no further need for sugar - the grocer with his sugar loaves looks on in horror. "Plus de Sucre": No more sugar

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But eschewing sugar hasn’t always been for the sake of our health or our pockets. During the reign of George III (1738-1820) it became fashionable to 'leave off sugar' in tea and coffee to register protest against the slave trade in the Caribbean. These, clearly politically motivated, individuals came to be known as the 'Anti-Saccharrites'.

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However, to dismiss the current wave of anti-sugar activity as a passing fad would be an enormous mistake, not only for the population but also for the food and beverage industry.

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The difference today is that it is beyond doubt that many of us are carrying more weight than is good for our health, either now or in the long-term; that a considerable number of our children and young adults are overweight and even (classed as) obese; and that this is costing and will cost the ‘public purse’ (that’s all of us as tax payers) lots of money. Chronic, non-communicable diseases have the potential not only to destroy health and lives but also eat large quantities of resources (both human and monetary). It’s no wonder therefore, that our politicians are interested!

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So the sugar issue 2014 style has a rather different character from previous episodes. High profile, high visibility and high volume demands from some have resulted in lots of focus by the government, loyal opposition and all of their (political) advisors. Here is a matter that has all the elements of a good story - huge health scare (untimely death), from a ubiquitous ingredient, which impacts not only adults but young children and babies, and further stretches our National Health Service, and in an election year! Of course, it’s getting the politicians' attention.

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There is no shortage of experts to which our politicians and regulators can turn for advice; particularly high profile have been the medics and we have heard some of their views today. Now I am very keen on taking the best possible advice from the medical profession when I am ill, and constantly marvel at what modern medicine can achieve, but what many medics know about nutrition and food is limited, to say the least, let alone what they know about the science of food and its production.   Other scientists are doing excellent work, and, again, we have heard some very useful presentations today. It is particularly helpful that advice from nutritionists is today moving away from individual nutrients to food, given that this is what we buy and eat. But there are some parts of the science discourse that are quite silent; we haven’t heard much from are the product developers and food scientists – perhaps because they have been working away at the coal-face (in companies) focussing on delivering the safe and tasty food we want to buy. As scientists we have tended to work in silos with the nutritionists unlikely to talk to food scientists and vice versa. We need our food scientists to stand up for their products (and what's in them) and start talking sense, if only to counter the nonsense which is being perpetuated by some of the other 'experts' and commentators.

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. The powers that be hear advice from the campaigners, and very effective campaigners they are too – perhaps the industry needs to learn a little from their methods. From the pundits, by which I mean both professional pundits such as (market) researchers and trend analysts, and citizen pundits from mums.net to Jamie Oliver. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no end of admiration for the work that Jamie’s done in raising the profile of the need for better nutrition in schools, something I don’t think could have been achieved by either the education authorities or the food industry, but we need to be careful about the consequences. I am fairly certain that if the school food regulations had not outlawed beverages other than water, (semi-skimmed) milk and high juice drinks from schools, the level of horror which greeted the exposure of 'sugar' levels in juices recently would have been diminished significantly. Mums know that juice is high in sugar – that’s why historically they let it down with water, and provided a range of alternatives, including no added sugar juices and squashes, which have now been put into the ‘bad for you’ category by being banned from schools. Better surely to educate our children to make healthy choices from what's available.

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And then, of course, there’s the media – no prizes for guessing who’s winning battle of the headlines on this very high profile issue, in fact we heard this morning that Action on Sugar has deliberately courted high profile media coverage in order to get ‘the attention of the politicians; and very successful they have been too. Now as someone who monitors the media on an on-going basis, I am less concerned about the impact of these headlines on consumers - frequently they (headlines) have little if any impact, or result in short-term changes in buying habits that may not be maintained. I have no doubt, however, that they are having the desired effect in the political arena. And it is not helped when other, arguably more authoritative, media weigh in.

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This is the cover of New Scientist from the beginning of the New Year. Actually, for those who got beyond the cover, the feature was well researched and argued – until it came to the ‘sound bite’ (literally) on low calorie sweeteners which simply quoted a (poor) ‘recent study’ claiming that low calorie sweeteners make you fat – when the weight of scientific evidence shows they don’t.

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Or perhaps more concerning, from Monday of this week, the BBC poll which was used to reinforce a claim that the majority of people not only wanted ‘sugary drinks banned from UK schools’ but also a tax of soft drinks. Now what concerns me here is that the BBC is not reporting the news but making the news (i.e. carrying out research to make a, actually political, point). Consumers in the UK trust the BBC to report about food and food scares – I'm not sure that generating news on this topic counts as impartial reporting.

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Against this background it is perhaps not surprising that food and beverage manufacturers – and retailers – are feeling under siege.

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Now the food industry has one very unfortunate characteristic, whether faced with an opportunity or a threat, and that is to imitate each other, acting rather like a shoal of fish.

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The corollary can be that the industry is so busy watching and imitating each other that threats from other directions are ignored – often until it's too late.

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Unfortunately, shoal-like behaviour like this is not without consequences, not least taking the eye off the danger – and focussing on distractions.

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For me, one of the greatest distractions – I would even say ‘own goals’ - perpetrated on and by the food industry in recent years, is so-called 'clean label'. Now people definitely want to know, more than ever, what is in their food and why, and where it comes from – and as food producers every company and brand should be able to tell them with clarity and confidence. Nor would I say that 'free-from' foods are not important for individuals who need to avoid certain food components, ingredients or additives, or even for those who want to avoid them as a choice. It's the terminology 'clean' that I really object to. If so-called ‘clean’ labelling was a celebration of the ingredients that are in these foods, and their origin and provenance, this might be another matter – but no, ‘clean’ is essentially a negative campaign where the food industry takes valuable communication space on pack (and elsewhere) to take pot-shots at itself.

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So we have products: ‘made from fruit’ with ‘no artificial colours of flavours’

With –'no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives’ – but 1g of salt.

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‘free from artificial colours, flavours and preservatives’ soon becomes  

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No added preservatives’ ‘No artificial flavours’ OR ‘Sugar free’

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hardly surprising then that telling people products have ‘no sugar’ might lead them to believe that sugar is a bad thing.

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All that ‘clean’ labelling has achieved is to generate an unrealistic set of expectations from retail buyers and specifiers, confusion among at least some producers,

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And not just confusion but cynicism among consumers - which leads to disengagement. Demonising ingredients, including ‘artificial’ ingredients that have the potential to be a very real part of the solution as far as (the health consequences of) overweight and obesity are concerned is problematical to say the least. Cartoon credit: The Grocer

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 As an example, here is Kantar market data for purchases of low calorie cola through Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA and Morrisons between 2006 and 2012. During 2006 and 7, three of these retailers (not Tesco) reformulated their own-label low calorie cola to remove aspartame. Following these reformulations, sales of own-label cola fell significantly, not just in share but in volume. Much of this volume was picked up by the branded players (sweetened with high aspartame blends with ace K), and some was lost from of the low cal cola category, including to sugar-sweetened cola.   Reformulating established, popular products even to the same level of sweetness is difficult – decreasing the sweetness level by 10% - let alone 20% - is likely to result in an unacceptable product. In any case most of the soft drink volume in the UK is zero calorie or no (added) sugar. Even in carbonates, the poster child for excess sugar consumption, more than half of the volume from the leading brands is low or zero calorie. By the way, this slide is a good illustration of why tax will not work in this sector – Pepsi Max, Coke Zero, diet Pepsi and diet Coke are significantly more expensive (in some cases several times) than their retail brand counterparts; this didn’t stop switching.

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The risks of such distractions, and going along with the whims of opinion and fads, is that myths become perpetuated, whole categories of safe and effective additives and ingredients are marginalized, the palette available to product developers is restricted and, if we are not careful, innovation stifled.

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In the case of the present focus on sugar, there are now clear signs of the argument turning not just on sugar but also against sweetness (sweet food and drinks) in general.

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However, there are opportunities, particularly at the moment when there is such political focus on public health. Perhaps the greatest (opportunity) is for all sectors of the food industry to stop knocking each other and start standing up for the great food chain that has been built to meet peoples needs and desires, including to help people meet their aspirations for a healthy diet. To focus on the benefits. As an aside, and I was pleased to see a ‘hunch’ confirmed by one of the presentations earlier today, I cannot be alone in suspecting that the reason that the products called Max and Zero are stealing a march on the 'diets' and 'lights' in that people don’t want to be pigeon-holed by their everyday choices; they don’t feel they are making a compromise. Maybe the terms 'diet' and even 'light' have had their day?

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We do need to develop and tell better stories about our products, the role they play and sometimes why they contain the ingredients they do. We also need to get better at refuting the nonsense talked about food whether it's produce or processed.

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Finally we need, in this context, to talk positively about the role of sweet taste, and the (still developing) science that will enhance our understanding. I might add at this point that how we taste sweet and how we taste salt is biologically completely different and therefore transferring learning from the salt reduction programme to sweet is unlikely to be simple, even if only looked at on the dimension of how we taste.

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So, I was asked to finish with some ideas about how you might rise to the challenge posed by the media in the present sugar-hostile environment.

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Without wanting to duck the issue, I don’t think the media is the issue but rather it is the message or messages we are sending out about our food and its role in the diets of people nowadays.

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We all have an excellent library of material on which to build evidence-based stories that support our brands.   I would challenge every one of you to understand what exactly is in your products, what it contributes, why it’s there.   You know your markets better than any commentator. The industry associations can help to aggregate the data and hone messages relevant to all; but sometimes you will need to stand up for your own company and products. Do so from a position of real insight.   We have seen today some very powerful insights from Kantar, which are being used by other stakeholders, including Public Health England and the Behavioural Insights Unit (of the Cabinet Office) to hone their thinking on tackling obesity. I am sure that all of you have the same data – so isn’t it a pity that it cannot be put together perhaps by the industry associations, to validate the very real contribution that voluntary pledges under the Responsibility Deal, or other initiatives, are making to helping consumers make the right choices and reduce calorie intake.

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In continuing to build this evidence we, as companies, also need to step up to the plate (literally) in terms of science. Whether it’s the science to underpin the (health) benefits of the products we are marketing, or the science to understand how they perform/impact on our bodies, this work needs to be undertaken. It was very encouraging to hear at the (Zenith) soft drinks conference yesterday, ‘innocent’ say that they are undertaking research to understand how their ‘smoothie’ drinks contribute positively to health (over and above the calories they deliver). .

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There are no ‘one size fits all’ answers to the challenge of making sure that people consume the right foods and beverages to support them in achieving long, healthy and happy lives. There are also no ‘one size fits all' messages. What is needed is the right message for the right audience, delivered by the right person at the right time.   And don’t be afraid to go on the record with the facts.

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So in summary: Say a little, Do a lot – mostly quietly, with great precision and insight And Do the right things right.   Thank you.

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About Ailbhe: Ailbhe majored in biochemistry at University College Dublin and gained her marketing training with Unilever in the United Kingdom. At The Boots Company, she worked on branded vitamins and supplements and subsequently worked on the team which brought ibuprofen OTC as Nurofen® in the United Kingdom and internationally. After working at a new product development consultancy, and in advertising, Ailbhe set up her own consultancy. She has worked on a wide range of product categories and markets including food, beverages and ingredients, alcoholic drinks, household goods, OTC pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Ailbhe's experience in research, business development and communications is truly international and she works regularly in the USA, Asia and Australia.   Professionally and personally Ailbhe is passionate about science-based communication, in particular translation of science and scientific and technical concepts into meaningful information for those who need it (including businesses, consumers, journalists, regulators). She is an active participant in engagement with influencers in a wide range of interest areas. Fallon Currie Consulting is an international marketing and communications consultancy which provides strategic advice and advocacy to national, international and global businesses.

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