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Taking sugary drinks to task

Taking sugary drinks to task

The NZ Dental Association is proposing a slew of moves to tackle the negative impacts of sugary drinks.

Launched today, the association's consensus statement on sugary drinks highlights seven areas for action, including monitoring food marketing, warning labels and a sugary drinks tax.

NZDA spokesman Dr Rob Beaglehole told media that earlier this week he had to remove all of an 18-month-old's teeth because of damage caused by sugary drinks. “This child is going to have to wait another four years before his permanent teeth come through. He’ll have problems socialising, he’ll have problems eating, and he’ll have problems speaking.”

Among their recommendations, the NZDA suggested an icon on drinks indicating the amount of sugar in teaspoons, which Dr Beaglehole said was a format people were more familiar with. That proposal would see a 600ml bottle of fizzy drink state that it contains 16 teaspoons of sugar.

A similar point was highlighted earlier in the year in an expert advice paper from the Royal Society of New Zealand, which found that current food labelling made it difficult for consumers to assess how much sugar has been added to food and drinks.

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The NZDA's call for a sugary drinks tax in line with World Health Organisation recommendations follows the release of draft legislation in the UK for a sugar tax. The tax would include a two-band levy for sugar-added soft drinks, which would mean a higher tax for drinks with more than 8 grams of sugar per 100ml.

University of East Anglia's Professor Paul Dobson told the UK Science Media Centre that there was a "changing public sentiment towards sugary soft drinks which are little more than liquid candy".

If the levy was successful, he expected many other countries to follow suit with their own measures.

Read a summary of media coverage of the NZDA's consensus statement.


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