This week, supermarket giant Tesco announced that it will make further reductions to the amount of sugar in its soft drinks and these newly reformulated drinks will be available in-store from 11^th November.

This reduction in sugar is a direct result of the government’s sugar tax and is part of Tesco’s ongoing commitment to reduce the sugar, fat and salt content of the products the company makes.  This reduction in sugar content means that Tesco’s soft drinks will now have less than five grams of sugar per 100ml meaning that the average Tesco customer will be consuming 20% less sugar than they did in 2011.

Tesco is working in partnership with Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation to improve the nation’s health and so far they have reduced the salt, sugar and fat content of over 4,200 products.

Matt Davies, Tesco UK’s CEO said of this recent reduction in sugar:

“This is just one part of our plans to make the food on our shelves healthier by reducing levels of sugar, salt and fat in our own brands”

This reduction in sugar can be seen as a success of the government’s sugar levy (sugar tax) which will apply to drinks with a total sugar content above 5 grams per 100ml. A higher rate will be applied to drinks with more than 8 grams per 100ml. The levy won’t be applied to milk-based drinks or fruit juices. The levy will come into effect from April 2018.

The money raised from sugar levy will be used to double the funding available to primary schools for PE and sports programme. The government has estimated that the sugar levy will raise £320 million a year for primary schools to support healthier more active lifestyles in children. The funding will not only go towards expanding PE and sports programmes but to also expand breakfast clubs in primary schools ensuring that children have access to a healthy breakfast every week day.

The Lake Foundation is happy to hear that Tesco has taken this step to reduce the sugar content of its soft drinks and if more companies follow suit this can make a significant contribution to improving the health of the UK’s population.

An interesting new study has linked sweet drinks with body fat. The study has shown that drinking sugary drinks (such as coke) every day increases a type of body fat known as visceral fat. This type of fat surrounds particular organs in our bodies such as the pancreas and the liver. Visceral fat is important because it is linked to the development of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The study of a 1,003 people(average age of 45 years) compared the effects of sugary soda with diet soda drinks on visceral fat. The participants completed questionnaires about their food and drink consumption andbody fat levels were recorded using CT scans.  The participants were followed up over a period of 6 years and the authors found that those who drank sugary soda most frequently (daily) had the highest levels of visceral fat. However, there was no change in visceral fat levels in those who drank diet soda drinks.

People of African and African-Caribbean descent (and other ethnic minorities) have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Reducing the drinking frequency or finding alternatives to these drinks may help to reduce the risk of these conditions.

You can read more about this report here and here.

A recently published study has thrown new light on the links between dietary sugar and breast cancer. The study authors investigated the effect of different types of diets on the development of tumours in mice. The authors found that just 30% of mice on a starch-based diet had measurable tumours, whereas 50 to 58 percent of the mice on sucrose-enriched diets had developed mammary or breast tumours. The study also showed that numbers of lung metastases (secondary cancer growths) were significantly higher in mice on sucrose- or a fructose-enriched diet, when compared with mice on a starch -based diet.  This implies that sucrose and fructose have the ability to promote tumour growth through specific pathways.

 Although it’s difficult to compare mice with humans,  the mice in this study received amounts of sugar (relative to their size) that were similar to amounts found in western diets. This raises questions about the presence of sugar in the western diet and its influence on breast cancer. The diets of people of African and African-Caribbean descent are often high in sugar. It is also the case that young UK based Black women (under the age of 40) have poorer outcomes in relation to breast cancer when compared with their non-black counterparts.  Further research into the effects of dietary sugar on breast cancer in humans (particularly young Black women) is certainly warranted.

You can find more information about the studies here , here and here.

A study published in the journal Circulation has estimated the number of global deaths per year that are associated with sugar-sweetened drinks, what diseases sugar-sweetened deaths are linked to and where in the world these deaths are occurring. They estimated that 184,000 deaths per year are associated with consuming sugar-sweetened drinks and when they broke these numbers down by disease area most of the sugar-sweetened drink deaths were associated with diabetes  (133,000 death per year).  Cardiovascular disease was associated with 45,000 of these deaths and cancers 6,450.

The study also found that the majority of sugar-sweetened drink deaths occur in middle-income countries  (71%) whilst 24% of these deaths occur in high-income countries and 5% in low-income countries.

This is a very important study as it yet again provides more evidence of the effect of sugar on our health. It shows the clear need for all of us to reduce our sugar consumption and this is particularly important for the black community who are 3 times more likely to have diabetes and therefore are more likely to be affected by sugar-sweetened drink death.