The global diet is getting sweeter
A paper published in the Lancet points out that food in the world is getting sweeter, beverages in particular.
The paper is entitled Personal View paper and is written by Professor Barry M Popkin, School of Public Health, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, and Dr Corinna Hawkes, City University London, UK.
Previous research has shown that consuming foods and beverages with added caloric sweeteners is linked to an increased risk of weight gain, heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Currently, 68% of packaged foods and beverages in the USA contain caloric sweeteners, 74% include both caloric and low-calorie sweeteners, and just 5% are made with low-calorie sweeteners only. The added sugar comes from hundreds of different versions of sugar, all of which have the same equal health effect, says Professor Popkin.
After analysing nutritional datasets from around the world, the authors found that trends in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages around the world are increasing in terms of calories sold per person per day and volume sold per person per day.
Because of the major health risks, particularly weight gain and increased risk of diabetes, hypertension and many cardiovascular problems associated with added caloric sweetener consumption, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting major initiatives to reduce intake. Many governments have already implemented policies with this goal, including taxation, reduction of availability in schools, restrictions on marketing of sugary foods to children, public awareness campaigns and front-of-pack labeling.
The authors conclude: “We have…shown from trends data that consumption seems to be decreasing in countries with taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (eg, Mexico, Finland, Hungary, and France). WHO, major scientific bodies, and most countries recognise the importance of reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to improve public health. The evaluation of not only sugar taxes, but also new marketing controls and front-of-pack labelling, is important and represents one of the next frontiers– namely, can these policies effectively reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and intake of total added sugars?”
Category: Features, Health alert
