Sugar ban: Junk food should be axed from school to stop tooth decay
SUGAR-packed junk food should be taxed and banned from schools in a bid to curb soaring levels of obesity and tooth decay.
Vending machines selling sweets and fizzy drinks should also be banished from public places according to leading British academics.
New research has shown that sugars in the diet should make up no more than three per cent of total energy intake to reduce the financial and social burdens of tooth decay.
Co-author Professor Philip James, honorary professor of nutrition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Our top priority is not to allow the idea of a magic single bullet to solve the problem to be developed.
“There now needs to be an explicit revision of population dietary goals as it relates to every aspect of government policy.
“We need to make sure that use of fruit juices and the concept of sugar-containing treats for children are not only no longer promoted, but explicitly seen as unhelpful.
“Food provided at nurseries and schools should have a maximum of free sugars in the complete range of foods amounting to no more than 2.5 per cent of energy.
“Vending machines offering confectionary and sugary drinks in areas controlled or supported financially by local or central government should be removed.
“We are not talking draconian policies to ‘ban’ such sugar-rich products, which are available elsewhere, but no publicly-supported establishment should be contributing to the expensive problems of dental caries (fillings), obesity and diabetes.
“The food industry should be told that they should progressively reformulate their products to reduce or preferably remove all the sugars from their products. New food labels should label anything above 2.5 per cent sugars as ‘high’.
“Given the politics of big business, the most governments may do is to reduce the limit from 10 per cent to 5 per cent but our paper suggests that it should be 2.5 per cent.
“A sugars tax should be developed to increase the cost of sugar-rich food and drinks. This would be simplest as a tax on sugar as a mass commodity, since taxing individual foods depending on their sugar content is an enormously complex administrative process.
“The retail price of sugary drinks and sugar rich foods needs to increase by at least 20 per cent to have a reasonable effect on consumer demand so this means a major tax on sugars as a commodity.
“The level will depend on expert analyses but my guess is that a 100 per cent tax might be required.”
The research, from experts at University College London and the LSHTM, published in the journal BMC Public Health, analysed the effect of sugars on tooth decay.
It found that sugars are the only cause of decay in children and adults.
Free sugars as defined by the World Health Organisation Nutrition Guidance Advisory Group include sugar added to foods and also naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit concentrates.
Tooth decay affects up to 90 per cent of school children and the vast majority of adults.
The treatment of dental diseases costs five to 10 per cent of total health expenditure in industrialised countries.
Only two per cent of people at all ages living in Nigeria had tooth decay when their diet contained almost no sugar, around 2g per day
Researchers used public health records from countries across the world to compare dental health and diet over time across large populations of adults and children.
They found that the incidence of tooth decay was much higher in adults than children, and increased dramatically with any sugar consumption.
Current guidelines from the World Health Organisation set a maximum of 10 per cent of total energy intake from free sugars, with five per cent as a 'target'.
This equates to around 50g of free sugars per day as the maximum, with 25g as the target.
The latest research suggests that five per cent should be the absolute maximum, with a target of less than three per cent.
Study author Aubrey Sheiham, Emeritus Professor of Dental Public Health at UCL, said: “Tooth decay is a serious problem worldwide and reducing sugars intake makes a huge difference.
“Only two per cent of people at all ages living in Nigeria had tooth decay when their diet contained almost no sugar, around 2g per day.
“This is in stark contrast to the USA, where 92 per cent of adults have experienced tooth decay.”
