In the US sugar is listed without a DV% as well. People might reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of your daily recommended added sugar intake (per the article's 45g).

I LOLed at https://www.milkywaybar.com/nutrition

> MILKY WAY® is a delicious and indulgent treat that can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.

Why lie? It's heavily-processed, high-fat, high-sugar candy. Of course it's unhealthy, there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

No one would reconsider a Milky Way if they knew it had 70% of the recommended daily sugar intake. The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already.

IMO one great labeling victory has been restaurants that put calorie info on menus. Some of that has been by regulation, but regardless it's a good move.

> The people who care about sugar intake avoid Milky Ways and similar candies already.

This may be true, but this statement is also missing the (possibly large?) group of people that simply have no benchmark in their mind for how much sugar is acceptable.

I've read several competing articles about daily limits to added sugar, and the number I have in my mind is 80g/day max. Given that a teaspoon of sugar is roughly 4g, this amounts to 20 teaspoons of sugar per day! I've wondered if nutrition labels listing sugar in terms of teaspoons instead of grams would help people visualize exactly how much sugar they are consuming.

I would agree that those who care about sugar intake probably will avoid Milky Ways, but I'm also concerned that if we don't have a % DV on sugar, people will perhaps assume that there is no ceiling. Why do we have % DV for fat, carbs, etc., but not sugar? Hmm, well maybe it's that no amount of sugar you eat today will harm you.

As a curious experiment, walk down the street and randomly survey people for how many grams of sugar they think they should limit themselves to.

They don't exactly lie. This is the tricky thing with candy: it's damn hard to eat just one. Everyone (except possilby diabetics, I don't know) would be fine with eating a milky way every 2-3 days, but that's not how the brain works on sugar. I can and do rarely eat 300g of chocolate inside an hour. I'm pretty sure that's a little bit dangerous, but the only way to avoid it is to not buy the chocolate in the first place. Once I've given myself permission to start eating it's all gone real quick.

>Why lie? It's heavily-processed, high-fat, high-sugar candy

What part of claiming to be able to enjoy a chocolate bar if you eat otherwise healthy is a "lie"? It's only "unhealthy" in the context of your overall diet.

Would you say marmalade is healthy? It's certainly tasty. It has calories so in the context of starvation, it's absolutely healthy. What's so tacky about this is that there are only cynical reasons to discuss manifestly unhealthy candy in the context of a balanced diet. A candy bar has zero value in a balanced diet, like marmalade.

>I'm not sure if there should be a tax on sugar.

I think there should be in Canada because we have a public health care system and the effects of sugar intake puts stresses on public health care, and those that who binge on sugar should be forced to pay for their higher costs on public health - I should not be subsiding their preventable issues.

Right. You're free to choose your diet, but any costs of said diet should not be imposed on the rest of society.

I agree very much with that. But what if food manufacturers come up with new ingredients that escape the tax legally and those ingredients are actual worse for you?

That seems like a pretty minor "what if" to a pretty concrete solution.

what about athletes and body builders who do carb/sugar loading?

What about ppl who eat greasy food and don't exercise?

Als, Wouldn't this merely penalize poor people with long hours and long commutes, poor people who are forced to live in food desserts, poor people who only have enough cash to buy bad food, poor people who have to feed a family of 5 on minimum wage.

A few things:

1. I think most athletes who purposely ingest a lot of carbs are probably not using sugar to accomplish this.

2. Greasy food is not actually bad for you. Grease is essentially fat, which is about as healthy as you can get. In a typical fast food meal, the greasy burger is the healthy part (minus the bun). It's the fries and soft drink which are the unhealthy part.

3. Grains are an incredibly affordable source of calories (it depends on the grain, but for the most part they are all upwards of 2,000 calories for $1). I don't think anybody's in danger of starving if sugar is more expensive.

We have that in the UK.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/18/article-2344177-1A...

Also have a standard more detailed breakdown on the back.

It works well.

I think the UK 'traffic light' labeling is still voluntary.

Or pictures of graphic obesity and diabetes complications like cigarette packs have. Or at least a surgeon generals warning.