Food manufacturers operating in the UK have missed their first voluntary target on reducing the levels of sugar in a selected group of products – but the country’s government has described the moves made so far as an “encouraging start”.
In March last year, the Public Health England (PHE) agency set a target for food manufacturers and retailers, as well as restaurants, cafés and pub chains, operating in the country to reduce sugar by 20% in the top nine categories of products providing sugar to children’s diets by 2020.
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Health is a devolved policy issue in the UK but, while the target was set by Public Health England, the nature of the supply chain means moves to reduce sugar is likely to affect products sold elsewhere in the union.
The guidelines challenged the industry to voluntarily cut overall sugar content in biscuits, breakfast cereals, cakes and pastries, chocolate, confectionery, ice cream, puddings, sweet spreads and yogurts from “baseline” levels in 2015 levels. As a start, PHE said the Government was looking for a 5% reduction between August 2016 and August 2017.
This afternoon (22 May), PHE said there had a been a 2% cut “in both average sugar content and calories in products likely to be consumed in one go”.
Progress had been measured in eight of the nine categories. In five of those eight categories, the levels of sugar fell, PHE said.
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By GlobalDataThe category so far unmeasured is cakes and pastries. PHE said the levels of sugar per 100g in these products could not be calculated as too few products had weights available in the years under review.
The agency also revealed since it had set the target in March 2017 it had changed the company that it planned to use to measure sugar levels in the out-of-home sector. PHE plans to report that channel’s progress in 2019.
Duncan Selbie, the chief executive at Public Health England, said: “We have seen some of the food industry make good progress, and they should be commended for this. We also know that further progress is in the pipeline. However, tackling the obesity crisis needs the whole food industry to step up, in particular those businesses that have as yet taken little or no action.”
The Food & Drink Federation, the association representing food manufacturers operating in the UK, had been critical of a focus by government on cutting sugar levels and had repeatedly said it would be challenging to cut the levels of the ingredient in many products.
Tim Rycroft, the FDF’s corporate affairs director, said this afternoon: “In some categories we have always said that sugar reduction would be particularly challenging. Nonetheless many of those categories have made good progress in reducing calories.
“As PHE correctly point out, reformulation takes time – it can’t happen overnight. Sugar reduction has considerable technical challenges; sugar plays a variety of roles beyond sweetness in food including colour, texture and consistency. It is for these reasons that we have long said that the guidelines are ambitious and will not be met across all categories or in the timescale outlined.”
As well as the lack of specific data on cakes and pastries and on the out-of-home sector, PHE revealed various other “limitations” to the results. The data is based on what consumers buy and PHE therefore said its results may not include the impact of some sugar-reduction initiatives underway at manufacturers that has yet to result in reformulated products hitting shelves.
Health campaigners expressed disappointment at PHE’s report. The British Dietetic Association said some manufacturers had “refused” to provide data.
“We recognise that there are limitations in the data and that these are the early stages of the reformulation programme. However, it is disappointing to have such significant gaps and for a number of manufacturers to have refused to allow information on their progress to be published,” Jo Instone, the BDA’s head of external affairs, said.
PHE told just-food permission was needed to include the percentage change in the levels of business’ sales-weighted average sugar per 100g and calories “in single serve products likely to be consumed by an individual at one time” between the baseline year of 2015 and 2017.
“Once the analysis for each category was complete, the top ten businesses that would feature in the relevant table [of data] were asked to provide permission. Of the 97 businesses that were contacted, 70 replied and gave permission; eight replied and did not give permission; 15 did not reply. Data on the remaining four businesses were ultimately not included,” the agency said.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of hospitality trade body UKHospitality, said the association’s members were “already working proactively to reformulate menus, provide greater choice and promote healthier attitudes to eating”.
She added: “Good progress is being made by the sector in most areas, although the report does highlight data limitations so early in the study. The data for out-of-home will be better developed in time for the 2019 report, which will be able to give a better indication of progress regarding hospitality’s efforts to reduce sugar. Transformation of eating habits will take time and we will have a clearer view of the progress next year.”
PHE also reported how much sugar soft drinks manufacturers had removed from their products ahead of the introduction of the soft-drinks tax in April.
The level of sugar had been reduced by 11% and average calories per portion by 6% ahead of the levy coming in, the agency said.
