Third time lucky? UK delays sugar report, campaigners suggest widespread failures

22 Mar 2022 --- The much-anticipated UK report on the fight against sugar has been delayed by a year, much to the ire of campaign groups.

The report by Public Health England is expected to reveal whether the UK has achieved its goal of reducing sugar content on a range of food items by 20%.

Initially planned to be published last autumn, it was delayed until early this year and has now been postponed until autumn, marking a year since it was supposed to go public. 

“The impact of this delay means that crucial information – about where progress in sugar reduction is being made and where it isn’t – is not in the public domain and informing ongoing policy to address childhood and adult obesity levels,” Barbara Crowther, coordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign at Sustain, tells NutritionInsight.The 2020 report found that supermarkets, cafes and restaurants had reduced sugar by 3%.

The year-long delay is “frustrating and quite frankly unacceptable,” she adds.

“Since the Sugar Reduction Program was introduced in 2017, the government has promised that if the food industry failed to comply with voluntary targets, mandatory measures would follow. Instead, they have chosen to delay the release of the final sugar reduction report in order to prevaricate further,” Mhairi Brown, policy and public affairs manager at Action on Sugar, tells NutritionInsight.

Government failure
Urging the government to publish the information as soon as possible, Crowther highlights the need of holding some sectors of the food and drink industry to greater accountability. 

“We need industry to go faster and deeper to remove sugar from processed food and drink and increase availability and affordability of healthier products. Market reports suggest some high sugar categories such as confectionery, cakes and biscuits have grown in volume.” 

According to Brown, the government program has been a failure as food is still full of sugar. 

“This impacts our health while putting pressure on UK farmers to produce all of the food industry’s sugar instead of more healthful crops – and damaging our environment,” she says. 

“If we are to have any chance of overcoming the huge barriers to eating less sugar and leveling up health inequities, we need strong, joined-up policies to incentivize the food industry to stop adding so much sugar to our food.” 

Punish and mandate
Crowther adds that the voluntary nature of the sugar reduction schemes now needs to be made mandatory with incentives to industry through duties and levies.The report has been anticipated for a year.

“In 2018, the government set a target of halving childhood obesity by 2030 – four years on, the most recent data shows obesity prevalence increasing, not falling – so we need more urgent, more effective action now, and these delays are not acceptable.” 

Citing an example of mandatory implementation, Crowther discusses the soft drinks industry levy, where the UK implemented a sugar tax, resulting in less sugar from the beverages being consumed. A year after the levy, sugar intake from soft drinks dropped 10%.

The threat to extend the levy to milk-based drinks means there has been more reduction there too, she adds.

Moving at different speeds
Crowther notes some parts of industry are moving faster than others, with evidence pointing to faster progress by retailers on own-label brands than manufacturer brands. 

Sugar reduction has gone further in categories such as breakfast cereals, yogurts, soft drinks and milk-based drinks than in cakes, confectionery and biscuits, she highlights.

“The potential application of fiscal penalties on products and companies not going far enough could provide huge incentive to speed up sugar reduction, where companies leading the way will gain an advantage over those not doing enough to reformulate.” 

“The National Food Strategy has recommended a sugar and salt reformulation tax to be applied to the manufacture of processed food and drink. This is the kind of measure the government should now develop, alongside mandatory reporting targets for business.”

Sugar reduction is one of the most sought after positionings that drive purchasing decisions, according to Innova Market Insights.

By Andria Kades