Children’s sugar intake equals five doughnuts a day,
campaigners say
Children and young people are consuming the equivalent of 20 chocolate chip biscuits a day in sugar, according to anti-obesity campaigners. The calculations by the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA) have led to renewed calls for food and soft drinks manufacturers to make their products healthier to cut the number of dangerously overweight children. They want urgent action to reduce the amount of “hidden” sugar in many common foodstuffs.
Children and young people aged between 11 and 18 typically have an intake of 73.2 grams of sugar a day, far in excess of the 30 grams – or seven teaspoons – maximum recommended in official health advice, according to the OHA’s estimates. Those 73.2 grams are the equivalent of 20 chocolate chip or custard cream biscuits, 14.6 jelly babies or 4.8 jam-filled doughnuts. Four- to 10-year-olds are consuming 53.5 grams of sugar a day, while the figure among 19- to 64-year-olds is 59.9 grams daily.
Dr Alison Tedstone, Public Health England’s chief nutritionist, said that while some food manufacturers have pledged to cut the amount of sugar in their products, certain kinds of retailers – including coffee chains – need to follow suit. Producers including the supermarkets Tesco and Waitrose, Nestlé, and Kellogg’s have announced plans to reduce their use of sugar as part of a reformulation drive ahead of the government’s sugar tax coming into force in 2018. However, many other firms have made no such commitment and may be hit by the tax. Public Health England (PHE) wants all food manufacturers and outlets to strip 20% of all sugar out of a wide range of products by 2020.
Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, said that overweight or obese children are much more likely to be dangerously overweight in adulthood and thus increase their risk of developing 11 forms of cancer.
(Denis Campbell. www.theguardian.com, 24.02.2017. Adaptado.)
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