sugary drinks

WHO urges global action to curtail consumption and health impacts of sugary drinks

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Taxing sugary drinks can lower consumption and reduce obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay, says a new WHO report.

Fiscal policies that lead to at least a 20% increase in the retail price of sugary drinks would result in proportional reductions in consumption of such products, according to the report titled “Fiscal policies for Diet and Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs)”.

Reduced consumption of sugary drinks means lower intake of “free sugars” and calories overall, improved nutrition and fewer people suffering from overweight, obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.

Free sugars refer to monosaccharides (such as glucose or fructose) and disaccharides (such as sucrose or table sugar) added to foods and drinks by the manufacturer, cook, or consumer, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices, and fruit juice concentrates.

Obesity on the rise

“Consumption of free sugars, including products like sugary drinks, is a major factor in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes,” says Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director of WHO’s Department for the Prevention of NCDs. “If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services.”

In 2014, more than 1 in 3 (39%) adults worldwide aged 18 years and older were overweight. Worldwide prevalence of obesity more than doubled between 1980 and 2014, with 11% of men and 15% of women (more than half a billion adults) being classified as obese.

In addition, an estimated 42 million children aged under 5 years were overweight or obese in 2015, an increase of about 11 million during the past 15 years. Almost half (48%) of these children lived in Asia and 25% in Africa.

The number of people living with diabetes has also been rising, from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. The disease was directly responsible for 1.5 million deaths in 2012 alone.

Need to reduce sugar intake

“Nutritionally, people don’t need any sugar in their diet. WHO recommends that if people do consume free sugars, they keep their intake below 10% of their total energy needs, and reduce it to less than 5% for additional health benefits. This is equivalent to less than a single serving (at least 250 ml) of commonly consumed sugary drinks per day,” says Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development.

According to the new WHO report, national dietary surveys indicate that drinks and foods high in free sugars can be a major source of unnecessary calories in people’s diets, particularly in the case of children, adolescents and young adults.

It also points out that some groups, including people living on low incomes, young people and those who frequently consume unhealthy foods and beverages, are most responsive to changes in prices of drinks and foods and, therefore, gain the highest health benefits.

Using fiscal policies to reduce consumption

Fiscal policies should target foods and beverages for which healthier alternatives are available, the report adds.

The report presents outcomes of a mid-2015 meeting of global experts convened by WHO and an investigation of 11 recent systematic reviews of the effectiveness of fiscal policy interventions for improving diets and preventing NCDs and a technical meeting of global experts. Other findings include:

  • Subsidies for fresh fruits and vegetables that reduce prices by 10–30% can increase fruit and vegetable consumption.
  • Taxation of certain foods and drinks, particularly those high in saturated fats, trans fat, free sugars and/or salt appears promising, with existing evidence clearly showing that increases in the prices of such products reduces their consumption.
  • Excise taxes, such as those used on tobacco products, that apply a set (specific) amount of tax on a given quantity or volume of the product, or particular ingredient, are likely to be more effective than sales or other taxes based on a percentage of the retail price.
  • Public support for such tax increases could be increased if the revenue they generate is earmarked for efforts to improve health systems, encourage healthier diets and increase physical activity.

A number of countries have taken fiscal measures to protect people from unhealthy products. These include Mexico, which has implemented an excise tax on non-alcoholic beverages with added sugar, and Hungary, which has imposed a tax on packaged products with high sugars, salt or caffeine levels.

Countries, such as the Philippines, South Africa and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have also announced intentions to implement taxes on sugary drinks

Sugary drinks may result in poorer memory

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https://speciality.medicaldialogues.in/sugary-drinks-may-result-in-poorer-memory-studies/

Sugary Drinks Tied to Overall Poor Diet

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Individuals who consumed a lot of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) also tend to have overall poor dietary habits, which makes it difficult to tease out the adverse effects of soda alone, researchers said here.

They analyzed the dietary habits of more than 25,000 Swedes without diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or cancer, and found that the group that consumed the most SSB’s — at about a 12 oz can of soda per day — also consumed fewer healthy foods (P<0.002).

 “What we find is that you eat quite differently depending on if you have a high consumption of juice, or soda, for instance,” said the lead author of the study, Louise Brunkwall, MPH, a PhD candidate at Lund University in Sweden, in an interview. She will present their findings at an oral session on Thursday here at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

The researchers broke up foods into 24 categories; fatty foods like sausages and french fries were put in unhealthier categories, while healthier foods, which consisted of fruits, vegetables, yogurt, fiber-rich bread, and fish were categorized as healthier.

Those who consumed healthier drinks, like tea or juice, also consumed healthier foods, found the authors. High consumption of coffee was associated with higher intakes of meat and high-fat margarine and a lower intake of breakfast cereals (all P<0.002).

The cohort was 60% women, and all were 45-74 years old, and the mean body mass index was 25.6. Data were taken from the Swedish Malmö Diet and Cancer Cohort. Diet history was assessed by a 7-day food record and a 168-item questionnaire. The linear regression was adjusted for age, sex, season, method, body mass index, leisure time physical activity, total energy intake, smoking, education, and alcohol intake.

“Other studies have seen similar things,” said Brunkwall. “But it’s been lacking, this kind of study, in a more systematic way and with a bigger cohort.”

Brunkwall said that doing diet studies, and looking at all of the factors that can affect health, can be extremely complex.

“The message of this study is that if you only look at sugar-sweetened beverages you sort of miss a whole lot of other things,” she said. “You don’t eat a single product or a single food — you eat in combinations and in patterns.”

She added that researchers should be aware of the flaws of single-food or single-nutrient studies when they’re reading or interpreting other research.

The research was cross-sectional, so the researchers were not able to draw conclusions about causation.

Sugary drinks trigger early periods .

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The team from the Harvard Medical School in the US looked at the relation between sugar-sweetened drinks and the age at which girls have their first period.

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They followed 5,583 girls, aged 9-14 years between 1996 and 2001 and found that those who drank more than 1.5 servings of sugary drinks a day had their first period 2.7 months earlier than those who consumed two or fewer such drinks a week.

“The main concern is about childhood obesity but our study suggests that age of first menstruation occurred earlier, independently of body mass index, among girls with the highest consumption of drinks sweetened with added sugar,” said Karin Michels, associate professor, who led the research.

Drinks with added sugar have a higher glycemic index than naturally sweetened drinks such as fruit juices.

High-glycemic foods result in a rapid increase in insulin concentrations in the body.

Higher insulin concentrations can result in higher concentrations of sex hormones and large alterations in the concentrations of these hormones circulating in the body has been linked to periods starting earlier.

Greater caffeine intake has also been associated with earlier periods.

“Our findings provide further support for public health efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks,” Michels added.

The findings are important not only because of the growing problem of childhood obesity in a number of developed countries, but also because starting periods earlier is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer later in life.

The research was published online in the journal Human Reproduction.

 

Fruit juice just another sugary drink?

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Inclusion of fruit juice as a fruit equivalent is probably counter-productive, researchers at the University of Glasgow have warned. File photo
APInclusion of fruit juice as a fruit equivalent is probably counter-productive, researchers at the University of Glasgow have warned. File photo
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Drinking fruit juice as a substitute for fruits could be counter-productive due to its high sugar content, researchers at the University of Glasgow have warned.

Writing in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, Professor Naveed Sattar and Dr. Jason Gill both of the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, call for better labelling of fruit juice containers to make explicit to consumers that they should drink no more than 150ml a day.

They also recommend a change to the U.K. Government’s current five-a-day guidelines, saying these five fruit and vegetable servings should no longer include a portion of fruit juice.

Inclusion of fruit juice as a fruit equivalent is probably counter-productive because it fuels the perception that drinking fruit juice is good for health, and thus need not be subject to the limits that many individuals impose on themselves for consumption of less healthy foods.

Professor Sattar, who is Professor of Metabolic Medicine, said, “Fruit juice has a similar energy density and sugar content to other sugary drinks, for example: 250ml of apple juice typically contains 110 kcal and 26g of sugar; and 250ml of cola typically contains 105kcal and 26.5g of sugar.”

“Additionally, by contrast with the evidence for solid fruit intake, for which high consumption is generally associated with reduced or neutral risk of diabetes, current evidence suggests high fruit juice intake is associated with increased risk of diabetes.

“One glass of fruit juice contains substantially more sugar than one piece of fruit; in addition, much of the goodness in fruit fibre, for example is not found in fruit juice, or is there in far smaller amounts,” Sattar said.

Although fruit juices contain vitamins and minerals, whereas sugar-sweetened drinks do not, Gill argues that the micronutrient content of fruit juices might not be sufficient to offset the adverse metabolic consequences of excessive fruit juice consumption.

“In one scientific trial, for example, it was shown that, despite having a high antioxidant content, the consumption of half a litre of grape juice per day for three months actually increased insulin resistance and waist circumference in overweight adults,” Gill said.

“Thus, contrary to the general perception of the public, and of many healthcare professionals, that drinking fruit juice is a positive health behaviour, their consumption might not be substantially different in health terms than drinking other sugary drinks,” he said.