Sugar Law: But why aren’t manufacturers playing the game?

It has now been a year and a half since the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control conducted raids on overseas supermarkets to verify that levels of added sugar in drinks and foods matched those of France Hexagonale.

Remember that in 2013, Victorin Lurel and then Helène Vainqueur-Christophe enacted a law aimed at putting an end to the practice of manufacturers who included astronomical amounts of sugar in products sold abroad under the pretext of pleasing consumers with good taste. At the time, fruit yoghurts had 27-50% more sugar than the same brands offered in France Hexagonale. The same is true for the soft drink section, where the difference in sugar can be as high as 40%.

For the parliamentarians, it was in the interests of the overseas population to stop these practices and to regulate the sugar level in products manufactured in France very firmly, but intended for consumption in the overseas territories. The law therefore aspired to guarantee the quality of the food supply in the French overseas territories.

difficult application

But the legislature did not really make the industrialists tremble. In 2019, a report by the Research Institute for Development raised questions about the lack of statistical monitoring of enforcement of this law, and also notes that soft drinks marketed in Guadeloupe and Martinique, contain 2 grams more sugar than elsewhere. Another in France.

The report is so indebted that the government is reportedly seeking to delay its publication until at least the end of the year. To the dismay of Victorine Laurel, he asked Bruno Le Maire not to bury the fire. In a press release dated August 27, 2021 and co-signed with Helen Winkur Chestof, he recalls that this neglect impairs the health of the residents of Guadeloupe and people abroad in general, at a time when they have been severely affected by the epidemic of the Covid-19 wave, with consequences in terms of care. in the hospital.

🔎 if Tweet embed He reveals that the government is seeking to bury a “debian” report on the implementation of the sugar law abroad. With Tweet embed ask Tweet embed To advertise and punish fraudulent companies. The state must abide by the law pic.twitter.com/W1qfrKgmc9

– VictorinLurel August 27, 2021

Indeed, this laissez-faire policy is not without consequences for the health of Ultramarines. 11% of Guadeloupe and 14% of Réunion suffer from diabetes, a rate two to three times higher than in France.

Obesity in the West Indies is 27.8% compared to 14.5% in the rest of France.