14 Nov 2023 --- To mark Sugar Awareness Week, a new survey by Action on Sugar (AoS) has revealed over a third of sweet food and drink products sold in major UK high street coffee shops exceed an adult’s daily limit of sugar — 30 g for free sugars — in just one serving.

With more than one in two young adults aged 25-34 living with overweight and obesity and one in three adults aged 25-34 years suffering from untreated tooth decay in the UK, AoS is calling for greater transparency over a “scandalous” lack of nutrition information available at the point of purchase and new levies to be introduced to encourage healthier food and beverage choices. 

Speaking to Food Ingredients First, Zoe Davies, nutritionist at AoS, says: “Sugar Awareness Week highlights the health impacts too much sugar has on our health. Eaten in moderation (5% of total energy intake per day for free sugars); sugar can be part of a healthy diet. Current data, however, shows we are eating much more than this limit. Free sugars are often added into foods such as table sugar or molasses but also include sugars found in honey and processed (i.e., juiced) fruit and vegetables.”

“Too much sugar can also lead to a higher intake of calories. Food and drink high in sugar are easy to overindulge in, contributing to weight gain and health problems associated with overweight and obesity, such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Sugar-sweetened beverages have also been directly linked to the incidence of type 2 diabetes.”

“Encouraging the food and drink industry to improve the nutritional composition of their products, including by reducing sugar, by incremental reformulation, would benefit the whole population,” she explains. 

“It’s incredible how easy it is to unknowingly consume 39 teaspoons of sugar and over 1,300 calories with a simple drink and cake purchase — all of which is highly unnecessary to taste great. This is why clearer labeling should be a must, so people know exactly what they are buying.”

According to Davies, it’s not just seasonal food and drink beverages that were found to contain a lot of sugar. “While we think ‘seasonal’ products are only offered temporarily, there are so many occasions that ‘seasonal’ products are often offered in one form or another year-round.”

“There are ways in which consumers can enjoy in moderation but still with less sugar, for example, asking for fewer pumps of syrup, the smallest drink size and sharing a cake. However, it would be even better for the companies to reduce the sugar in these products so we can enjoy them without unnecessarily high sugar levels,” she details. 

“The best form of action would be if customers directly emailed these companies with feedback that the sugar levels are too high and to ask them to be more transparent at the point of sale.

True details of sugar content are “limited”
While certain companies are required, by law, to display the calorie content of food and drink at the point of purchase, details about the sugar content are often limited.

This latest research reveals that 782 sweet food and drink products surveyed in nine leading high street coffee shops are insufficiently labeled for consumers. If nutrition information was fully transparent, over half would be marked “red” (high in total sugars). 

Astonishingly, just one food item (a Greggs All Butter Croissant) was low in sugar.

To put this into perspective, a visit to a coffee shop could see a person consume up to 39 teaspoons of sugar and 1,390 calories with the combination of one food item and a beverage. 

Notably, some of the sugars in milk-based beverages will be from lactose in the milk. Still, current nutrition labeling needs to differentiate between the amount of naturally occurring sugars (lactose) from milk and free sugars added as table sugar, syrups and blended fruits, urges AoS. 

Despite the “astronomical” amount of sugar found in the products surveyed, the difference in sugar content of similar products can vary widely, illustrating the food and drink industry’s ability to reduce sugar if incentivized.

Levies proposed
The new industry levies proposed by AoS to encourage reformulation include extending the current Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) across ALL juice and milk-based drinks and introducing levies targeting the high sugar content in sweet foods. 

Revenue generated from the levy can be invested back into children’s health, remarks AoS. 

Under the recent voluntary measures, the out-of-home (OOH) sector has been unsuccessful in reducing sugar — with just a mere 0.2% reduction overall compared to a more impressive 44% decrease in average sugar added to soft drinks (as a result of the SDIL).

“Levies put the responsibility firmly on companies to reduce sugar in their products, or otherwise pay the price, which provides a real financial incentive for them to add less sugar to their products,” outlines Davies. 

“The most effective levies are those like the SDIL, with a tiered structure, so that the levy rate is dependent on the amount of sugar, with higher rates applied to higher sugar products and lower rates to lower sugar products.”

Although many European countries have voluntary agreements with the food and drink industry to reduce sugar, current legislation is mostly restricted to sugary drinks. 

Many countries, including France, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Portugal — and the UK — have a sugary drinks levy. These levies are generally applied to carbonated soft drinks, but some countries also include sweetened milk and juice drinks, notes Davies. 

“Hungary’s ‘public health product tax’ is an example of a levy that goes beyond drinks, applying to all pre-packaged products with added sugar. It has successfully incentivized reformulation, with approximately 40% of unhealthy food product manufacturers changing their recipes to reduce or remove unhealthy ingredients because of the tax.”