The government’s bid to achieve a 20% reduction in sugar across key areas contributing to childhood obesity has ended in a spectacular failure.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities today quietly released the final report on the programme, more than a year later than promised.
The report shows that the industry achieved just a 3,5% reduction in sales weighted average total sugar per 100g in products sold between the baseline year for the programme in 2015 and 2020.
The scheme, which was a flagship part of the government’s obesity strategy, was launched under the now disbanded Public Health England and set out to achieve a 20% reduction in sugar across the categories in that period.
Instead, today’s report shows there was a 7.1% increase in the tonnes of sugar sold from the product categories included in the programme between the baseline and year four. This included a 26.9% increase in the tonnes of sugar sold in chocolate confectionery and 24.5% for sweet spreads and sauces.
Just three categories – yoghurts and fromage frais (down 18.4%), breakfast cereals (down 11.3%) and puddings (down 7.5%) – saw falls in sugar over the period, with overall an 8.1% increase in total volume sales from 2015 to 2020 for the categories included in the programme.
Health campaigners seized on the results as proof that the voluntary approach had been “a disaster”. They called for ministers to bring in new taxes on other products, including confectionery, on top of the soft drinks sugar levy introduced in 2018.
Today’s report showed that for soft drinks covered by the levy, the percentage change in sales weighted average sugar was down 46% from 2015. Decreases were similar across all socio-economic groups.
It also found the total sugar purchased per household from drinks subject to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy had decreased across all socio-economic groups, with the largest reduction in people on long-term state benefits, casual and lowest grade workers, unemployed with state benefits only, at 38.4%.
Yet overall, the sales of drinks subject to the SDIL increased from 2015 to 2020 by around 750,000 litres (21.3%). Sales decreased by over five-fold for drinks with 5g-8g of sugar per 100ml and more than halved for drinks with over 8g of sugar per 100ml.
The report claimed some of the increases in sugar being consumed may have been caused by families stocking up on sweet treats during lockdown.
“Some of the increases in sales will be affected by the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in more food and drink being purchased for consumption in the home.
“This was partly due to some initial stockpiling and schools, workplaces and most businesses in the out of home sector either closing or operating through delivery.”
However, the sugar reduction strategy was even less successful when it came to the out-of-home sector, achieving just a 0.2% reduction in the simple average total sugar per 100g in products sold between its baseline of 2017 and 2020.
“A voluntary approach has been shown not to be able to deliver the required level of progress to make any significant and lasting change,” said Obesity Health Alliance director Katharine Jenner.
“Instead, excessive and unnecessary amounts of harmful sugars are added to food and drink products, which should and must be reduced if we want to improve the nation’s health.
“We hope lessons have been learned from this vital monitoring of food industry activity from the Office of Health Improvement & Disparities and that ministers now fully understand that insufficient progress has been made and that alternative levers are needed.
“Evidence suggests that the SDIL has been an enormous success – reducing sugar intake even for people on lower incomes without leading to a decline in sales. The government must now explore ways of expanding this model in order to fix the broken food environment and make the healthy option the easiest and most affordable option for everyone.
Action on Sugar and Salt chairman Professor Graham MacGregor said: “Whilst this new report shows that the food industry is capable of reducing sugar levels in food with good progress in breakfast cereals and yoghurts, it makes it abundantly clear that a voluntary reformulation approach simply does not work.
“The UK faces an obesity crisis and one of the principal plans outlined by the Department of Health and Public Health England was to tackle this by reducing sugar in food products by 20% by 2020 across the main food categories. Not surprisingly the plan was an abject failure due to a lack of enforcement.”
Childen’s Food Campaign co-ordinator Barbara Crowther, said: “Although delayed, we are pleased to see this final report, as it provides hugely important insight on how the industry is performing on sugar reduction. What it very clearly shows is that reformulation is possible, but that the pace of change under a voluntary scheme will remain slow and uneven – just 3.5% overall against a target of 20%.
“What’s also clear is that taking a mandatory approach combined with financial business incentives that reward healthier food production and penalise less healthy items is much more transformational. This is shown by the 46% overall reduction achieved by the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. This includes a dramatic fall in sales of high sugar drinks and switch of purchases to low and no sugar options, and a fall in household consumption across all socio-economic groups.
“It’s very worrying to see how much overall volumes of sugar sold via confectionery, biscuits, puddings and cakes rose in the final year. A voluntary programme is clearly not sufficient to shift the dial on sugar consumption – we need mandatory programmes alongside other regulatory measures on marketing and promotion to deliver the change we need.”
FDF chief scientific officer Kate Halliwell said: “The figures released in the sugar reduction report highlight the significant progress industry is making but the 20% reduction target set by government has never been realistic. There are certain products that remain challenging for manufacturers to reformulate and reduce the sugar content while keeping the flavour customers know and love.
“Our companies spend considerable time and money on reformulation and are proud they have reduced sugar by 12% in the average shopping basket compared to 2017. We would encourage government to work hand in hand with industry to build on this work, instead of setting arbitrary targets.”
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