An Urban's Rural View

If, as the cliche holds, a dog biting a man is not news but a man biting a dog is, our news antennae should quiver with excitement when a candy company comes out in favor of eating less sugar.

The quivers reverberate when the company is soloing. Much of the food industry opposes the Food and Drug Administration's proposed rule requiring disclosure of added sugars on product labels. Mandatory labeling of added sugars, the industry says, will cost a ton. It won't convince consumers to give up candy. And it could confuse consumers, as there's already a total-sugars labeling requirement.

Mars, the maker of M & Ms and Snickers bars, begs to differ. "Mars supports the consideration of new labeling approaches, including added sugars labeling, which aim to provide consumers with information that will help guide decisions about their sugar intake," the company said in comments filed with the FDA (http://tiny.cc/…).

Not only is Mars pro-labeling: "Based on emerging science," the filing said, "Mars supports helping consumers reduce their intake of added sugars to no more than 10% of total energy intake" and has already started cutting portion sizes. (Currently Americans' added sugar intake averages 13% of daily calories.)

This does seem like news, and at first glance it's tempting to think the headline on the story might read, "Company Takes Stance Contrary To Interest." But, no, that can't be right; no company knowingly acts contrary to interest. Maybe we'd get a better headline if we asked, "How could Mars construe a reduction in sugar consumption to be in its best interest?"

A cynic might answer, "The filing is just clever marketing. Being on the side of the angels won't cost Mars a penny. Everyone knows candy is loaded with sugar; the labels won't dull the public's sweet tooth." This explanation seems plausible, but it's good to remember that Mars also makes food (Uncle Ben's rice, for example) that may contain added sugars consumers are less aware of.

Or a cynic might say, "Why fight a tidal wave? The FDA is going to go ahead with the rule, so Mars is just bowing to the inevitable." Except if it's so inevitable, why aren't other companies bowing, too? Surely Mars doesn't have a monopoly on smarts.

A less simplistic answer might be that Mars is an unusual company. In 2013 Fortune magazine called it "among the most secretive, insular, and little understood multinational companies around" (http://tiny.cc/…). In the same article Fortune ranked it among the top 100 companies in the country as a place to work.

On its website, Mars claims to live by five principles, one of which is mutuality: "We believe the standard by which our business relationships should be measured is the degree to which mutual benefits are created" (http://tiny.cc/…). A cynic might dismiss this as airy marketing talk, and a variety of critics, from English vegetarians to fair-trade advocates, have probably snickered at the claim.

Mars, though, has often worked to assuage critics. And in other cases it has done things that seem consistent with mutuality, like making public its research on the cocoa genome. Another company might have patented its findings. But if companies like that are from Venus, Mars is from Mars.

It can afford to be. Mars is big ($34 billion in annual revenues) and is owned by a family, not by public shareholders or by a buy-and-flip private-equity fund. It is not, in other words, under pressure to maximize short-term profit. It can take the long view.

And in the long run, Mars' self-interest might well lie in consumers trusting that it cares about their health. All signs are consumers want healthier food choices; all signs are processed food is not their idea of healthy. Why wouldn't a farsighted processed-food maker do whatever it can to stand out as pro-health?

That may or may not be the way Mars is thinking. None of us, alas, are privy to the company's executive-suite discussions. But whatever Mars thinks, its added-sugars stance is definitely news.

Urban Lehner

urbanity@hotmail.com

(CZ)

© Copyright 2015 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.