ABC radio’s Background Briefing program on Sunday aired a documentary criticising the Australian Paradox, a Sydney University study which argued that despite a rise in Australia’s obesity rates over the past 30 years, refined sugar consumption per person had undergone a “substantial and consistent decline”.
The study concluded the role of sugar in fuelling obesity rates was overblown.
The study, co-written by renowned nutritionist Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, has been used by the Australian soft-drink industry to ward off public-health initiatives aimed at curbing soft-drink consumption. One such measure was tried in New York last year when the sale of soft drinks in measures bigger than 16oz (473ml) was banned. The measure was later overturned by a state court.
The ABC’s investigation was based on research by former Reserve Bank economist Rory Robertson, a longtime critic of the evidence backing the Australian Paradox study.
In the documentary Robertson pointed to one chart in Brand-Miller’s study showing a rise in full-sugar soft-drink sales from 35 litres per person in 1994 to 45 litres per person in 2006.
“In the paper they describe it as a 10% decline, which is nonsense – obviously it’s a 30% increase,” Robertson told the ABC.
But Australian Beverage Council chief executive Geoff Parker told Guardian Australia the controversial study was just “one of a number of different papers that we reference”.
“We don’t look to one particular source of information in determining our position, we look at a range of sources,” Parker said.
“There’s enough information out there for us to have the position that consumption of full-sugar sweets and beverages has been on the decline on the last 10 or 15 years,” he said.
Sydney University has launched an inquiry into Robertson’s complaints, but a spokeswoman for the university stressed that, at this stage, “there have been no substantiated claims against the work of any academic at the university, nor indeed has there been any finding that the complaints warrant any further investigation”.
Parker said he would await the results of the university’s inquiry into the paper before he would consider taking it down from the Beverage Council’s website.
