Meals crusaders issue challenge: cut sugar to save NHS £50bn a yr

Sugar, whether or not in a Mars Bars or hidden in significantly less evident foodstuffs, must be lower by forty%, say academics. Photograph: Alamy

For a group of academics who spent over a decade pushing food producers to use less salt, achievement has been so sweet they have determined to consider on a new challenge: sugar.

But by opening a new front in their campaign to avoid a health crisis, they say they face a bitter struggle. This time an unappetising blend of government reluctance, vested business interests and fragmented market regulation lies in their way.

Action on Sugar was launched final month. At a time when several men and women had been defaulting on new year pledges to enhance their diet programs, the organisation explained the burden of cutting our sugar intake by up to forty% over the next 4 years must instead be positioned on Britain’s foods and drink companies. The group will meet Jeremy Hunt, the wellness secretary, this week to consider to persuade him to sign up to their lead to.

The well being and nutrition specialists behind the campaign say that except if Hunt agrees, growing amounts of weight problems and type two diabetes could value the country up to £50bn a 12 months – more than half of NHS England’s current budget.

“It is extremely difficult to argue with what we’re saying,” says Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medication and the chairman of Action on Sugar. “Human beings never need to have to eat additional sugar. It was never ever a feature of a mammalian diet program, since we couldn’t get it.”

Some academics have controversially likened sugar to addictive medication such as tobacco or cocaine and accuse the foods industry of cynically hooking children and mothers and fathers on junk food to maximise revenue.

Action on Sugar has avoided related comparisons, instead publishing data that displays how considerably sugar is ladled into our diets. A tall Starbucks caramel Frappuccino consists of eleven teaspoons of sugar – barely two spoons below the advisable daily consumption for ladies. Coca-Cola or Pepsi is made up of nine per can and a bowl of Kellogg’s Frosties has four.

In raising the situation, MacGregor and his team want to replicate the achievements of their earlier campaign, Consensus Action on Salt and Overall health (Income). Largely thanks to Funds, our salt intake in food items this kind of as bread, cereals and meat has fallen by 15% in the final 7 years, contributing to a reduction in strokes, heart attacks and situations of large blood pressure.

This cutback, done incrementally so that couple of noticed any distinction in taste, was championed by the Foods Requirements Agency, the government’s food security entire body. It drew up reduction timetables and even funded investigation into how bakers could decrease salt ranges with out ruining their loaves.

Action on Sugar argues that the very same gradual reductions could be applied to extra sugar with minor impact on taste. It says customers would benefit from enhanced diet plans, the government would curb potential healthcare charges and manufacturers would conserve on ingredient costs. “Reformulation is a win-win,” says nutritionist Katharine Jenner, the group’s campaign director. She says recent pledges by Tesco to lower sugar in its soft drinks and a reduction in the dimension of Mars and Snickers bars (albeit with no a corresponding price tag drop), displays it can happen.

But, she says, even though numerous foods producers might be prepared in principle, in actuality they are loth to signal up to a voluntary “duty deal” on calorie reduction introduced in 2012 by Andrew Lansley, the Conservative former wellness secretary, simply because it could injury their market place position.

At the root of this difficulty, says MacGregor, is a 2012 determination to strip duty for nutrition from the Meals Standards Agency, putting it alternatively under the political manage of the Division of Overall health beneath Lansley’s successor, Hunt.

MacGregor is scornful of the Conservatives’ dedication to lowering sugar and believes adjustments in the political landscape because the 1990s launch of the anti-salt campaign indicate his new venture could encounter powerful resistance, considerably of it driven by a strong foods business “sugar lobby”. “Lansley’s obligation deal is fully bonkers,” he says. “Generating the meals industry responsible for policing itself is a joke.”

He dismisses Tesco’s promise as getting negligible affect. “Tesco’s soft drinks account for about .5% of the market. What we want is that reduction applied across every single single sweet and soft drink that is marketed in the Uk, and then we’ll see a reduction.

“It is got to be Coca-Cola, Schweppes, each and every supermarket, every little thing. And if you do it slowly, and individuals get employed to it and they prefer the drink with much less sugar, then you can do it once more. This is how the salt thing worked. Do it gradually: incremental reductions, incremental targets.”

The Division of Wellness says it is continuing to talk about the situation with the food business and is “ready to go additional still”, but its policy is aimed at fighting obesity by helping men and women consume fewer calories, of which sugar is only one supply. It says 38 firms have signed up to its deal.

Sugar Nutrition Uk, a research physique funded by sugar companies, disputes Action on Sugar’s health care claims. It says sugar consumption is not a trigger of diabetes and can not solely be blamed for weight problems. “It is just not appropriate to say that reducing the volume of sugar in foods will usually result in a reduction of calories,” it explained. “In most cases the sugar will want to be replaced by another ingredient and the reformulated recipes can contain a lot more calories than the original.”

Barbara Gallani of the Meals and Drink Federation, which represents manufacturers, says far more research is necessary into how customers react to new recipes that indicate modifications to taste, texture and ingredients.

In spite of the resistance, MacGregor says Action on Sugar will attain its objectives, even if it has to wait for a modify of government. His group has already planned talks with Labour and the Liberal Democrats to persuade them to consider a feasible “sugar tax” to enforce blanket reductions.

“If Jeremy Hunt agrees to do this, which is very unlikely, then clearly we’ll place them on the back burner. But we do get items completed. We will get sugar down the way we’ve got salt down.”

Starbucks caramel frappuccino with whipped cream, tall: 44.3g, equivalent to eleven teaspoons of sugar
Coca-Cola Authentic/Pepsi, 330ml: 35g or nine teaspoons
Mars bar, 51g: 30.4g or eight teaspoons
Muller Crunch Corner strawberry shortcake yogurt: 23.6g or 6 teaspoons
Yeo Valley % fat vanilla yogurt, 150g: 20.9g or 5 teaspoons
Kellogg’s Frosties, 30g with semi-skimmed milk: 17g or four teaspoons
Glaceau Vitamin Water, 500ml: 15g or four teaspoons
Heinz Cream of Tomato soup, 300g: 14.9g or 4 teaspoons
Pot Noodle Curry, 114g king pot: 7.6g or two teaspoons
Hovis medium soft white bread, 40g slice: one.4g or .four teaspoons
Supply: Action on Sugar

Meals crusaders issue challenge: cut sugar to save NHS £50bn a yr