 The World Health Organization recommends we reduce our consumption of salt, trans-fat, saturated fats, and added sugars. Why? Because consumption of such foods is the cause of at least 14 million deaths every year from chronic diseases. Several decades ago it was heresy to talk about the impending global pandemic of obesity, but now we're seeing chronic disease rates skyrocket around the world. We have exported our Western diet to the far reaches of the planet. With white flour, sugar, fat, and animal-sourced foods replacing beans, peas, lentils, other vegetables, and whole grains. Understanding the reasons underlying this trend towards increased consumption of animal products, oils, and sugar, and the reduced consumption of whole plant foods begins with understanding the purposeful economic manipulations that have occurred since World War II relating to agricultural policies around the world. For example, the US government, since early in the last century, has supported food production through subsidies and other policies resulting in large surpluses of food commodities' meat and calories. In this artificial market, large food producers and corporations, big ag and big food, become very profitable, and that may be part of the problem. Last year, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the World Health Organization, gave the opening address at a global conference on health promotion. One of the biggest challenges facing health promotion worldwide, she said, is that the efforts to prevent our top killers go against the business interests of powerful economic operators. It's not just big tobacco anymore. Public health must also contend with big food, big soda, big alcohol. All these industries fear regulation and protect themselves by using the same tactics— front groups, lobbies, promises of self-regulation, lawsuits, and industry-funded research that confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt. And they should know. In 2003, the World Health Organization released a draft report outlining a global strategy to address issues of diet, making a series of rather tame recommendations. But six words in that report limit the intake of free sugars. Stimulated a remarkable series of events. Free sugars means added sugars. The food industry went to work within days. The sugar industry threw the sugar association and listed the support of officials high in the U.S. government and led a vigorous attack on both the report and the World Health Organization itself, culminating in a threat to get Congress to withdraw U.S. funding to the WHO. You know, the organization deals with AIDS, malnutrition, infectious disease, bioterrorism, and more, threatened because of its stance on sugar. Just as the U.S. went to bat for U.S. tobacco companies and led the charge against World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but the threat from the sugar industry was described by WHO insiders as worse than any pressure they ever got from the tobacco lobby. As revealed in an internal memo, the U.S. government apparently had a list of demands, deletion of all references to the science that experts compile on the matter, and having dietary guidelines are fine as long as there are no references to fat, oil, sugar, or salt. The threats failed to make the WHO withdraw their report, entitled Diet, Nutrition, and Prevention of Chronic Diseases that formally launched and concluded that a diet low in saturated fat, sugar, and salt and high in fruit and vegetables was required to tackle the epidemic rise in chronic diseases worldwide, though they did end up watering it down. Gone was referenced to the Comprehensive Scientific Report, and gone was its call for recommendations to actually be translated into national guidelines. History has since repeated. At the last high-level UN meeting to address chronic diseases, we helped block a consensus on action after lobbying from the alcohol, food, tobacco, and drug industries. When asked why Michelle Obama's successful childhood obesity programs in the U.S. should not be modeled around the world, a U.S. official responded that they might harm American exports.