Sugar is as Bad for You as Tobacco – Children Should Not be Drinking Fizzy Drinks

Daily Mail
March 7, 2014

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Draft guidelines suggest limiting the amount of sugar eaten daily. This may well be used as an excuse to start putting extra taxes on products with sugar in, like they did with tobacco.

Children should not be given fizzy drinks because they contain dangerous amounts of sugar, UN health chiefs said yesterday.

They also warned adults should halve their average intake to six teaspoons a day to avoid obesity, heart disease and other serious illnesses.

The guideline amount has been slashed dramatically amid fears that sugar poses the same threat to health as tobacco.

Experts blame it for millions of premature deaths across the world every year.

Graham MacGregor, a London cardiologist and health campaigner, said: ‘Added sugar is a completely unnecessary part of our diets, contributing to obesity, type II diabetes and tooth decay.

‘We have known about the health risks of sugar for years and yet nothing substantial has been done.

‘The new recommendations will be a wakeup call to the Department of Health and the Government to take action by forcing the food industry to slowly reduce the huge amount of sugar added across the board.’

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Amounts of sugar measured in the scientific standard of ‘spoonfulls’.

Chief medical officer Sally Davies has already said a tax may be put on calorie-laden food and drink to curb soaring  levels of obesity.

Labour suggested last night it would impose a maximum limit on sugar, fat and salt in products marketed at children.

The number of obese British adults is expected to double from one in four to one in two by 2050 – at a cost to the economy of £50billion a year.

The UN’s World Health Organisation said the crisis was being fuelled by hidden sugar in processed food and drink such as yoghurts, muesli, sauces, fizzy drinks, juice and smoothies.

Last night it published the draft guidelines urging adults to eat no more than 12 teaspoons of sugar a day and to aim for six.

And it said children should try for less than six teaspoons and avoid cans of fizzy drink such as Coke, which contains seven spoons.

Francesco Branca, director for nutrition for health and development at WHO, said: ‘Obesity affects half a billion people in the world and it is on the rise.

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