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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2016
Redskins, rock band The Slants form Just how much sugar do
Americans consume?
unusual alliance in trademark ight
Answer is complicated
By SAM HANANEL
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Simon
Tam has openly criticized the
Washington Redskins team
name as a racist slur that
demeans Native Americans.
But
Tam
and
his
Asian-American rock band, The
Slants, have formed an unusual
alliance with the NFL franchise
as they both battle the U.S. gov-
ernment over trademark protec-
tion for names that some con-
sider offensive.
The Supreme Court could
decide as early as this month
whether to hear the dispute
involving the Portland-area
band. And if the football team
has its way, the justices could
hear both cases in its new term.
At issue is a First Amend-
ment challenge to a law barring
the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Ofice from registering trade-
marks that disparage minority
groups. The ofice denied a
trademark to the Slants in 2011
after inding the name dispar-
aged people of Asian descent.
Less soda pop
consumption a
factor in drop
By CANDICE CHOI
AP Food Industry Writer
Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns
The Asian-American band The Slants, from left, Joe X Jiang, Ken Shima, Tyler Chen,
Simon “Young” Tam, Joe X Jiang in Old Town Chinatown, Portland. The Supreme Court
could decide as early as this month whether to hear the dispute involving the Port-
land-area band. And if the Washington Redskins football team has its way, the justices
could hear both cases in its new term.
that the cases should be con-
sidered together. Otherwise, he
says, a future ruling against the
Redskins could end up affecting
the band’s status.
Not to offend
The Slants say their goal
was not to offend anyone, but to
transform a derisive term about
the shape of Asian eyes into a
statement of ethnic and cultural
pride. The band won a major
victory last year when a divided
federal appeals court in Wash-
ington, D.C., ruled the law pro-
hibiting offensive trademarks
violates free-speech rights. The
Obama administration has asked
the Supreme Court to overturn
that ruling.
The Redskins, too, say their
team name is meant to honor
American Indians. But the
team has faced years of legal
challenges, and a testy pub-
lic relations ight, from mem-
bers of the very group they
claim to salute. The Redskins
case involves the trademark
ofice’s move last year to can-
cel the team trademark that was
irst registered in 1967. A fed-
eral judge has agreed with that
decision.
Unusual alliance
AP Photo/Nick Wass
Washington Redskins foot-
ball helmets are seen before
an NFL preseason football
game between the Washing-
ton Redskins and the New
York Jets, in Landover, Md.
A federal appeals court in
Richmond, Virginia, has not yet
considered the team’s appeal,
but the Redskins are urging the
Supreme Court not to wait. If
the high court agrees to hear the
Slants case, the team wants the
justices to hear both disputes at
the same time. Such requests to
leapfrog lower courts are rarely
granted.
Tam, in a legal brief, agrees
The legal alliance may
seem surprising to anyone who
has been on The Slants’ web-
site. One section has a lengthy
list of reasons why the cases
are different. No. 1 is “unlike
REDSKINS, THE SLANTS is
not an inherent racial slur.”
The website says the word
Redskin “has a long his-
tory of oppression” and “the
football team treats the peo-
ple as mascots.” By contrast,
The Slants “breaks stereo-
types about Asian-Ameri-
cans, especially in the enter-
tainment industry.”
Tam does not mention those
distinctions in his brief to the
court, and he declined to be
interviewed.
In the Slants case, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Fed-
eral Circuit ruled in December
that the First Amendment pro-
tects “even hurtful speech that
harms members of oft-stigma-
tized communities.”
“The First Amendment for-
bids government regulators to
deny registration because they
ind the speech likely to offend
others,” Judge Kimberly Moore
said for the majority.
The administration argues
that the law does not restrict
speech because the band is still
free to use the name even with-
out trademark protection. The
law “simply relects Congress’
judgment that the federal gov-
ernment should not afirma-
tively promote the use of racial
slurs and other disparaging
terms by granting the beneits
of registration,” the government
said.
Jeremy Sheff, a professor at
St. John’s University School of
Law who specializes in intellec-
tual property, said the Supreme
Court could be interested in
the cases because it has been
“pretty aggressive” in protect-
ing First Amendment speech —
even remarks considered highly
offensive.
NEW YORK — Sugar has
become the nutritional villain
du jour, but just how bad is our
addiction? The answer is tricky.
Philadelphia recently passed
a tax on sugary drinks, sev-
eral other places have proposed
them, and the government this
year recommended we limit
our intake of added sugars to 10
percent of daily calories, under-
scoring how signiicant elected
oficials believe the problem is.
But while determining exactly
how much sugar we’re con-
suming is a complicated busi-
ness — government igures are
estimates— the data and indus-
try trends indicate we’ve actu-
ally made progress in cutting
back.
On average, Americans’
total consumption of caloric
sweeteners like reined cane
sugar and high-fructose corn
syrup is down 15 percent from
its peak in 1999, according to
government data. That’s when
we consumed an average of
111 grams of sugar a day (423
calories).
After plateauing in recent
years, consumption was down
to 94 grams a day (358 calo-
ries) last year, according to the
U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture, which calculates the ig-
ures by estimating how much
of the caloric sweeteners pro-
duced are never eaten. But that
level is still higher than the 87
grams Americans consumed
on average in 1970.
Soda drop
A major factor for the drop
appears to be the decline in soda
consumption, as the high-fruc-
tose corn syrup used to sweeten
drinks like Sprite and Mountain
Dew has been on the decline.
Thomas Farley, the health
commissioner in Philadelphia,
said it could take many years
before the positive effects
from the reductions in soda
consumption to turn up in
health data. But he also noted
that factors like the growth in
snacking, the availability of
food in more places, and over-
sized restaurant dishes can fuel
obesity.
“Sugar is a problem, but
sugar is not the only problem,”
Farley said.
And though it’s lower,
sweetener consumption of 94
grams a day is still the equiv-
alent of roughly two and half
cans of Coke. That far exceeds
the government’s recommen-
dation to limit added sugar to
around 50 grams a day (200
calories) for someone on a
2,000-calorie diet.
Notably, a per capita con-
sumption igure doesn’t
account for the wide dispari-
ties in intake among individ-
uals. The way the USDA esti-
mates sweetener consumption
also means the speciic igure
could be higher or lower. The
agency changed its methodol-
ogy in 2012, which meant a
sharp reduction in how much
sugar it said we consume.
Emails obtained by the Center
for Science in the Public Inter-
est, which supports soda taxes,
show that a sugar industry
group wanted the change and
hoped for “as low a per capita
sweetener consumption esti-
mate as possible.”
There’s always room for
“improvement and reine-
ment” in making food con-
sumption estimates, said
Michael McConnell, an agri-
culture economist who spe-
cializes in sweeteners at the
USDA. But he said the change
in methodology was applied
retroactively, so any trend the
numbers show would still be
consistent. Even if the num-
bers are inexact, others agree
the downward trajectory in
sweeteners makes sense.