Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine
Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry
Queen Mary, University of London
Telephone: 020 7882 6018
London EC1M 6BQ
Embargoed until 00.01 hrs GMT 9th January 2014
WORLDWIDE EXPERTS UNITE TO REVERSE OBESITY EPIDEMIC BY FORMING
‘ACTION ON SUGAR’
Leading health experts from across the globe have today united to form ‘Action On Sugar’ - an
unprecedented call to tackle and reverse the obesity and diabetes epidemic [1]. Obesity is a major
crisis facing the UK and practically every country around the world, and yet there is no coherent
structured plan to tackle obesity. This group will initially target the huge and unnecessary amounts
of sugar that are currently being added to our food and soft drinks.
Action On Sugar will carry out a public health campaign, to make the public more sugar aware and
thus avoid products that are full of hidden sugars. Children are a particularly vulnerable group
targeted by industry marketing calorie dense snacks and sugar-sweetened soft drinks.
The major initial focus of the group will be to adopt a similar model to salt reduction pioneered by
Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH). This model has become one of the most successful
nutritional policies in the UK since the Second World War, by setting targets for the food industry to
add less salt to all of their products, over a period of time. As this is done slowly, people do not
notice the difference in taste [2].
Salt intake has fallen in the UK by 15% (between 2001-2011) and most products in the supermarkets
have been reduced between 20 and 40%, with a minimum reduction of 6,000 strokes and heart
attack deaths a year, and a healthcare saving cost of £1.5bn [3].
A similar programme can be developed to gradually reduce the amount of added sugar with no
substitution in food and soft drinks by setting targets for all foods and soft drinks where sugar has
been added. Action On Sugar has calculated that a 20 to 30% reduction in sugar added by the food
industry which, given a reasonable timeframe (3-5 years) is easily achievable, would result in a
reduction in calorie intake of approximately 100kcal/day and more in those people who are
particularly prone to obesity.
This reduction in calorie intake is predicted to reverse or halt the obesity epidemic and will also
have a significant impact in reducing the burden of chronic disease [4]. This campaign will focus
therefore on convincing the food industry, the government and the Department of Health (DH) that
this is by far the best way to tackle the obesity epidemic. This programme is practical, will work and
will cost very little. This also gives an opportunity to the food and soft drinks industry to shift
towards healthier options without having a significant effect on their profit margins.
Added sugar in our diet is a very recent phenomenon (c150 years) and only occurred when sugar,
obtained from sugar cane, beet and corn, became very cheap to produce. No other mammal eats
added sugar and there is no requirement for added sugar in the human diet. This sugar is a totally
unnecessary source of calories, gives no feeling of fullness and is acknowledged to be a major factor
in causing obesity and diabetes both in the UK and worldwide.
It's not just the well-known brands, such as CocaCola which has a staggering 9 teaspoons of added
sugar, but flavoured water, sports drinks, yogurts, ketchup, ready meals and even bread are just a
few everyday foods that contain large amounts of hidden sugars, some examples are outlined in the
table below:
Amounts of sugars* per portion of some well-known food and drink products [5]:
Energy
(kcal)
per
portion
Sugars*
per
portion (g)
Equivalent
teaspoons of
sugars* per
portion
(4g/teaspoon)
Product name
Starbucks caramel Frappuccino with whipped cream (with
Skimmed Milk)
Serving size
Tall (small)
273
44.3
11
Coca Cola Original
330ml
139
35.0
9
Pepsi Regular Cola
330ml
142
35.0
9
Mars chocolate bar
51g
230
30.4
8
Pret a Manger Very Berry Latte (with Milk)
295g
145
26.9
7
Muller Crunch Corner Strawberry Shortcake Yogurt
135g
212
23.6
6
Sharwood's Sweet & Sour Chicken With Rice
Cadbury Hot Drinking Chocolate (with Semi-Skimmed
Milk)
375g
420
22.1
6
200ml
160
22.1
6
Yeo Valley Family Farm 0% Fat Vanilla Yogurt
150g
120
20.9
5
Solero Exotic Ice Cream
88ml
94
17.0
4
Kellogg's Frosties (with Semi-Skimmed Milk)
30g
172
17.0
4
Butterkist Toffee Popcorn
25g
105
16.5
4
Glaceau Vitamin Water, Defence
500ml
65
15.0
4
Heinz Classic Tomato Soup
300g
171
14.9
4
Ragu Tomato & Basil Pasta Sauce
200g
80
13.8
3
Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Crunchy Oat Granola Cinnamon Bars
40g
186
9.0
2
Pot Noodle Curry King Pot
114g
507
7.6
2
Heinz Tomato Ketchup
15ml
18
4.0
1
Heinz Salad Cream
15ml
50
2.6
0.7
Hovis Soft White Bread Medium
40g
93
1.4
0.4
*The terms ‘sugars’ includes both naturally occurring (from e.g. fruit and dairy) and added sugar
Additional aims of the group include:
 To educate the public in becoming more sugar aware in terms of understanding the impact
of sugar on their health, checking labels when shopping and avoiding products with high
levels of sugar.
 To ensure that children are highlighted as a particularly vulnerable group whose health is
more at risk from high sugar intakes.


To ensure clear and comprehensive nutritional labelling of the sugar content of all processed
foods.
At the same time we would conduct a Parliamentary campaign to ensure the government
and DH take action, and that, if the food industry do not comply with the sugar targets, they
will enact legislation or impose a sugar tax.
Chairman of Action on Sugar, Professor Graham MacGregor; “We must now tackle the obesity
epidemic both in the UK and worldwide. The present government and Department of Health
Responsibility Deal has been shown to have had no effect on calorie intake and we must start a
coherent and structured plan to slowly reduce the amount of calories people consume by slowly
taking out added sugar from foods and soft drinks. This is a simple plan which gives a level playing
field to the food industry, and must be adopted by the Department of Health to reduce the
completely unnecessary and very large amounts of sugar the food and soft drink industry is currently
adding to our foods.”
Cardiologist and Science Director of Action on Sugar, Dr Aseem Malhotra; “Added sugar has no
nutritional value whatsoever, and causes no feeling of satiety. Aside from being a major cause of
obesity, there is increasing evidence that added sugar increases the risk of developing type 2
diabetes, metabolic syndrome and fatty liver. We must particularly protect children from this public
health hazard and the food industry needs to immediately reduce the amount of sugar that they are
adding, particularly to children’s foods, and stop targeting children with massive advertising for high
calorie snacks and soft drinks.”
Nutritionist and Campaign Director of Action on Sugar, Katharine Jenner; “You can wean yourself
off the white stuff by gradually reducing the amount you use – as you will know if you have stopped
adding sugar to your tea or coffee. But the sugar we add to our food accounts for a tiny fraction of
the hidden sugar we eat. To really make a difference to our diets we urge food manufactures to help
us eat less sugar.”
Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology at the University Of California, San Francisco Robert
Lustig; "’Common sense' and the food industry say that all calories are the same. But the science
says that sugar is different - that sugar is dangerous exclusive of its calories, just like alcohol.
Children are the primary targets of marketing campaigns, and the least able to resist the messaging.
That makes sugary drinks like the "alcohol of childhood", which makes them obese. At the same
time, this very large sugar intake is likely to put children at greater risk of developing fatty liver and
diabetes”.
Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa, Canada, Yoni Freedhoff; “Not only
has added sugar found its way into virtually everything we eat, but worse still, the use of sugar as a
means to pacify, entertain and reward children has become normalized to the point that questioning
our current sugary status quo often inspires anger and outrage. We need to de-normalize our new
sugary normal and re-relegate sugar to the role of occasional treat rather than its current role of
everyday, anytime, crutch”.
Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Liverpool, UK, Simon Capewell says, “Sugar
is the new tobacco. Everywhere, sugary drinks and junk foods are now pressed on unsuspecting
parents and children by a cynical industry focussed on profit not health. The obesity epidemic is
already generating a huge burden of disease and death. Obesity and diabetes already costs the UK
over £5billion every year. Without regulation, these costs will exceed £50billion by 2050”.
-ENDSNotes to Editor
For more information or contact:
● National PR - David Clarke: david@rock-pr.com 07773 225516
● Chairman of Action on Sugar, Professor Graham MacGregor: 07946 405617, g.macgregor@qmul.ac.uk
● Cardiologist and Science Director of Action On Sugar, Dr Aseem Malhotra: 07786 075842
aseem_malhotra@hotmail.com
● Nutritionist and Campaign Director of Action on Sugar, Katharine Jenner: 020 7882 6018 or 07740
553298, k.jenner@qmul.ac.uk
Website http://www.actiononsugar.org/ will be live 09.01.14 with the full list of aims of the group
Tweet https://twitter.com/actiononsugar #LessSugar
Ref 1 – Global expert advisors of Action on Sugar:
Chairman: Professor Graham MacGregor
Science Director: Dr Aseem Malholtra
Professor Andrew Rugg-Gunn
Professor Aubrey Sheiham
Professor David Haslam
Professor Jack Cuzick
Professor John Wass
Professor Peter Sever
Professor Philip James
Professor Simon Capewell
Professor Sir Nicholas Wald
Professor Timothy Lang
Dr Mike Rayner
Dr Robert Lustig (US)
Dr Yoni Freedhoff (Canada)
Non-medical expert advisors
Malcolm Kane
Neville Rigby
Tam Fry
Ref 2 - F He, H C Brinsden and G A MacGregor, 2013. Salt reduction in the United Kingdom: a successful
experiment in public health. http://www.nature.com/jhh/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/jhh2013105a.html
Ref 2 - National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Guidance on the prevention of
cardiovascular disease at the population level. NICE, 2010. http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PH25.
Ref 3 - Department of Health, 2011. Healthy lives, healthy people.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213720/dh_130487.pdf
Ref 4 - Survey details from the data table
The survey looked at 20 products from all leading supermarkets (Aldi, ASDA, Co-op, Iceland, Lidl, Marks and
Spencer, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose). Sugar content of products were rounded to one
decimal place. Data was collected in store and online from retailers and manufacturers websites in January
2014.
Food manufacturers are not required by law to separate added sugars (also known as ‘extrinsic’ and ‘nonmilk extrinsic’ sugar) from naturally occurring sugars (also known as ‘intrinsic’ sugar from e.g. fruit and dairy)
on a nutrition label.