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Reducing sugar content in sweetened beverages could prevent obesity, diabetes
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A reduction in free sugars added to sugar-sweetened beverages by 40% over 5 years, without the use of artificial sweeteners, could prevent 1.5 million cases of overweight and obesity and 300,000 cases of type 2 diabetes over 20 years, according modeling study data published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
“We have become a nation hooked on the sweet stuff, expecting all our food and drink to taste incredibly sweet, and it is making us overweight and obese,” Kawther Hashem, MSc, RNutr, a nutritionist and researcher for Action on Sugar, Queen Mary University of London, told Endocrine Today. “Merely having the option of ‘diet’ or ‘no sugar’ products does not work. Food and drink companies must slowly and gradually reduce the sugar and the sweetness, as they have already done for salt, so we can all get used to far less sugar in our diet.”
Hashem, along with Yuan Ma, of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, and colleagues analyzed
data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey rolling program (NDNS RP) between 2008 and 2012, including 4,156 children and adults who completed a survey, kept a 4-day food and drink diary and provided height and weight measurements. Researchers also analysed soft-drink sales data from British Soft Drinks Association annual reports between 2005 and 2010. They calculated sugar-sweetened beverage consumption level (with and without fruit juices) and its contribution to free sugar and energy intakes in the population, and they estimated the predicted reduction in energy intake and body weight for each adult after a 40% reduction in sugar.
Researchers scaled the distribution of the predicted body weight in the NDNS RP to the U.K. adult population, estimating the reduction in the number of cases of overweight, obesity and diabetes.
Researchers found that average sugar-sweetened beverage consumption between 2008 and 2012 was 272 g/person/day, with 84% of children and 65% of adults consuming these beverages on a daily basis. Over 5 years, a 40% reduction in free sugars (including all monosaccharides and disaccharides added to soft drinks, plus sugars naturally present in honey and syrups) in sugar-sweetened beverages would reduce energy intake by an average of 38.4 kcal/day (95% CI, 36.3-40.7) by the end of the fifth year, according to researchers.
“This would lead to an average reduction in body weight of 1.2 kg in adults, resulting in a reduction in overweight and obese adults by approximately half a million and 1 million, respectively,” Hashem said. “This would in turn prevent between 274,000 and 309,000 obesity-related type 2 diabetes cases over the next 2 decades.”
In a separate analysis that excluded fruit juices (due to potential challenges for reformulation), the predicted reduction in energy intake would be an average of 31 kcal/person/day (95% CI, 28.6-33.7), leading to a 0.96 kg reduction in body weight (95% CI, 0.88-1.04), a 0.7% reduction in overweight cases and a 1.7% reduction in obesity cases, and between 221,000 and 250,000 fewer type 2 diabetes cases over 20 years.
The predicted effect was greater in adolescents, young adults and individuals from low-income families, who consume more sugary drinks, according to researchers.
The proposal is modeled after the U.K. salt reduction program, which led to a reduction in salt content in many food products over 5 years, according to study background.
“A reduction in energy intake from sugar-sweetened beverages is unlikely to increase energy intake from other pathways,” the researcher wrote. “This is also supported by the fact that reducing salt in processed food did not increase the use of table salt.”
In comment accompanying the study, Tim Lobstein, PhD, director of policy for the World Obesity Federation in London, and Curtin University in Perth, Australia, said other measures, including a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and restrictions on advertising unhealthy food and drink to children, along with a reduction in sugar content, could also influence behavioral changes.
“In combination, such measures could have a substantially greater effect on sugar consumption than in isolation, bringing even greater relief to the over-stretched budgets of the U.K.’s health services,” Lobstein wrote. – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers and Lobstein report no relevant financial disclosures.
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