Sown in the spring to grow through the summer, the harvested crop travels on average 28 miles to one of our four advanced manufacturing plants in Bury St Edmunds, Cantley, Newark and Wissington. Patterns and trends of beverage consumption among children and adults in Great Britain, 1986-2009. Sugar reduction - the first year. © 2021 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Socioeconomic differences in purchases of more vs. less healthy foods and beverages: analysis of over 25,000 British households in 2010. Just two weeks later a University of Cambridge study highlighted why a sugar tax could be so beneficial. This study shows a 30% reduction in the sales of sugar from soft drinks in the last 4 years, equivalent to 4.6 g per capita per day. NDNS: results from years 7 and 8 (combined). CAS  The lack of granularity in the sales data also meant that the changes in the sugar content of companies’ product portfolios provide only an overall picture, and we were not able to distinguish what proportion of the changes were due to the reformulation of existing products or the introduction of new low-sugar products to the market. UK sugar tax 2020. Why is the UK introducing a sugar tax on soft drinks? https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ndns-results-from-years-7-and-8-combined, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22186747, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445503/SACN_Carbohydrates_and_Health.pdf, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/soft-drinks-industry-levy/soft-drinks-industry-levy, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011295, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/timeseries/ukpop/pop, http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210192, https://www.accesstonutrition.org/about-index, http://www.informas.org/bia-obesity/#BIAObesity%7C0, https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/11/e010874#ref-31, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832182/Sugar_reduction__Yr2_progress_report.pdf, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1477-4. Long-time campaigners rejoiced at the news as former chancellor George Osborne declared the government was committed to tackling rising rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes. 2012;108(3):536–51 [cited 2017 Apr 26] Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22186747. I2017SRCTN18042742: Evaluation of the health impacts of the UK Treasury Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL). Fruit juices with no added sugar are excluded from the tax and were categorised as “exempt”. It’s essential that more research is done on the wider impact of large-scale policies like this if we are to make the major advances in public health we so urgently need.”, C. Law, L. Cornelsen, J. Adams, T. Penney, H. Rutter, M. White, R. Smith. Leading UK soft drinks companies continued to experience positive growth in their share prices during the implementation of the UK Government’s Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), despite widespread industry fears the tax would harm their businesses, according to a new study published in Economics & Human Biology. • Evidence shows that a tax on sugary drinks that rises prices by 20% can lead to a reduction in consumption of around 20%, thus preventing obesity and diabetes (9). The sugar tax, known as the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), begins from April 2018 and consists of two bands. Meanwhile, the UK and Ireland are preparing for a 2018 implementation of a two-tiered levy on the sugar content in SSB. We have now published our first analysis of progress under the sugar reduction programme, assessing how far the food industry has gone towards achievement of the 5% reduction in the first year (by August 2017). BMJ Open. Results. The current expectation is that the UK sugar tax will bring in £275 million each year. Public Health England (PHE) has also published data on changes in sugar from 2015 to 2018, based on the data provided by Kantar, a household panel survey [15]. Soft drinks industry levy - consultations - GOV.UK. PubMed Google Scholar. 2018 [cited 2018 May 31]. Sugar reduction: achieving the 20% A technical report outlining progress to date, guidelines for industry, 2015 baseline levels in key foods and next steps. Moreover, the available evidence on sales data from countries that have implemented a tax on sugar products also aligns with these findings to suggest that purchases have reduced since the tax was implemented. Participants 1508 survey respondents were used to model weight change … Public Health England; Sugar reduction: report on progress between 2015 and 2018 [Internet]. An analysis of the stock market reaction to the announcements of the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy. Passport soft drinks: Euromonitor International. When one brand had multiple variants, the mean sugar content for the variants was calculated and paired with the sales data. Chi-squared test: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01. For these brands, the nutrient composition data were sourced online from the brand website in early 2019, and this data was used for all four years. What is the sugar tax? Furthermore, in March 2016, it announced a three-tiered levy on sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which was implemented in April 2018 and is the first soft drink tax in the world to have multiple tiers designed to drive reformulation [5]. The SDIL was introduced as part of the UK Government’s Childhood Obesity Plan to address childhood obesity, and related conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and help people reduce their daily sugar intake. Euromonitor also classifies small and local brands under the umbrella term “others”. To confirm that the levy only minimally impacted on the share value of the four companies listed in the UK suggests the SDIL is a win for public health and economically viable.”. The new rules say that each litre of sugary drink would have an extra tax charge of between 18 and 24 pence, depending on how much sugar is in the drink. The challenge to the food industry to reformulate their products and the introduction of the tax have been accompanied by a large public awareness campaign, particularly as part of an initiative called Change4Life [6] as well as increased attention to sugar-related harm in the mass media [7]. 37 Price elasticity results also suggest that differences in tax impact between jurisdictions may be influenced by country context including differences in consumer preferences, levels of wealth and baseline SSB … In 2015, eight of the top ten companies manufactured high- and mid-sugar products that are targeted by the SDIL, and two companies—Innocent and Tropicana—sold only exempt products (Fig. Job losses will be primarily concentrated in the London and South East regions, and sales in the hospitality sector and for smaller retailers are expected to … Consideration could be given to including these products in the SDIL to encourage reductions in the sugar content and to signal clearly to consumers that these are high-sugar products. A study of the sugar content in a sample of energy drinks in 2017 compared to 2015 (excluding zero-sugar products) reported a 10% decline (10.6 g/100 ml in 2015 vs 9.5 g/100 ml) [14]. For example, the 2018 volume sales data for the brand Lipton were matched with the mean nutrient information collected from five individual products with different flavours and/or sizes. 2). To estimate the sales-weighted mean sugar content of soft drinks in the UK market and to calculate the total amount of sugars sold by each company, we matched the Euromonitor brand-level data with the Brand View product-level data. The mean sugar content of soft drinks declined by 34% throughout the period, with the greatest decrease in 2017–2018, the year the SDIL was implemented. The sales-weighted mean sugar content of soft drinks fell from 4.4 g/100 ml in 2015 to 2.9 g/100 ml in 2018. RH and MR contributed to the study design and manuscript preparation. 2017 [cited 2017 May 17]. Available from: https://www.accesstonutrition.org/about-index, INFORMAS. No comments . A SSB tax can also prompt manufacturers to reformulate sugar levels downward, as seen in the United Kingdom even before the SSB tax was introduced in April 2018. We show that six of the top ten soft drinks companies have reformulated more than 50% of SDIL-eligible products by 2018. 62% of UK shoppers claim to have not changed their consumption behaviour in any way post-sugar tax, and only one fifth are checking sugar content on packages more frequently since the tax … Once adjusted for changes in the population size and expressed in per capita terms, the volume sales of soft drinks rose by 5%, from 351 ml per person per day to 367 ml per person per day. Below we summarize each of these actions. UK businesses claim sugar tax will result in job losses and high. Available from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445503/SACN_Carbohydrates_and_Health.pdf, Tedstone A, Targett V, Owtram G, Pyne V, Allen R, Bathrellou K, et al. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet the authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test for differences between the sales-weighted mean sugar contents of each soft drink category—here, we weighted the analysis so that each brand had influence proportional to total sales, but the sum of the units of analysis was equal to the number of brands. Elliott-Green A, Hyseni L, Lloyd-Williams F, Bromley H, Capewell S. Sugar-sweetened beverages coverage in the British media: an analysis of public health advocacy versus pro-industry messaging. This means that no historical change could be measured for these brands, other than changes in sales levels. But Williams appreciates that for others, weight loss alone may not be enough of an incentive to choose healthier options. Within a single brand, there may be a number of different products, for example, Lipton Ice Tea with Peach and Lipton Ice Tea with Lemon. The authors have no control over the data collection process and there is limited transparency in the methods of data collection or the reliability of the sources [11]. Design Modelling study. The aim of this study was to assess how individual soft drink companies and consumers have responded to calls to reduce sugar consumption, including the soft drink industry levy (SDIL), between 2015 and 2018. It's … Within the Euromonitor dataset, the granularity by brand differed from company to company. To test what impact this had on the results, we took the sales and composition data of those brands that did have a volume stratified between diet and regular versions (n = 16), combined the sales data and then calculated the mean sugar levels in the same way as for products where stratified sales data were not available. 2017 [cited 2017 Nov 19]. However, the volume of sugar sold from products classified as “low-sugar” has increased by 24% from 2015 to 2018, and the sugar content of many of these products is close to the threshold for the levy. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Euromonitor International and Brand View, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for the current study, and so are not publicly available. The sugar tax came into force on April 6, 2018, after hopes of a U-turn by PM Theresa May were dashed. 2016 [cited 2018 Apr 17]. Juan A. Rivera is director of the Mexican Research Centre in Nutrition at the National Institute of Public Health.. Mexico faces an epidemic of obesity and has one of the highest intakes of sugary drinks in the world. PS, RAH and MR are co-applicants on an NIHR-funded evaluation of the UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (16/130/01). Euromonitor data has a wide coverage, including hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, vending machines and fast food outlets. Available from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/832182/Sugar_reduction__Yr2_progress_report.pdf. Article  The SDIL was introduced as part of the UK Government’s Childhood Obesity Plan to address childhood obesity, and related conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and help people reduce their daily sugar intake. As a result of a budget settlement, the tax on non-alcoholic beverages was further reduced by 48.1 % to 1.82 kroner per litre, effective January 2021. National surveys show that the consumption of free sugars in the UK is more than double the guideline intake for adults and close to triple for children aged 4–10 and 11–18 years [1]. The findings we report here are similar to the few other studies that have looked at the sugar content of soft drinks in the UK in recent years, though only one other has reported on the change in sales. PS contributed to the study design, data analysis, data interpretation and manuscript preparation. THE UK EVERYDAY. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In Mexico, which has been the focus of multiple studies, the tax on soft drinks containing added sugar led … For specific design elements of each tax (magnitude, type of tax and targeted products), see Fig. We already know that the levy has led to substantial reformulation of soft drinks, reducing sugar levels considerably. Following a report from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition which recommended a lower target of 5% dietary energy from free sugars [3], the UK Government challenged the food industry to reduce the sugar content of foods by 20% by 2020 [4]. Firstly, it avoids the reliance on individual recall of consumption, and secondly, the datasets include greater detail about individual brands. includes £420 million in tax revenue from the levy itself, and an additional £84 million in the form of VAT payable on the levy. BMC Med 18, 20 (2020). We calculated the total annual sales for all brands across eight types of soft drink, as defined by Euromonitor: bottled water, carbonates, concentrates, 100% juice, juice drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and others. SJ is also funded by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Oxford at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and is an NIHR senior investigator. Many just love the taste, others dislike the artificial sweetener, and some don’t like being told what to drink. The implementation of the sugar tax in each of these three countries highlights the unlikely chance of a low tax amount having much long-term impact. We analysed the nutrient composition data of soft drink products across the whole market. Participants 1508 survey respondents were used to model weight change among the population of England aged 4 … Data were only available for four annual time points and were insufficient to analyse how sugar levels changed immediately before and after the announcement or introduction of the SDIL, or to estimate the specific impact of the SDIL in comparison with the general trend of sugar reduction in soft drinks. 1). There was no change in the sugar content of brands excluded from the SDIL. This dataset, and other sources of food sales data, would benefit from the inclusion of population demographic factors in the future, including socioeconomic and geographic measures. For example, the company Britvic manufactures a number of different brands, including Pepsi, Pepsi Max, Lipton Ice Tea and Robinsons. Hashem KM, He FJ, Jenner KH, MacGregor GA. Cross-sectional survey of the amount of free sugars and calories in carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages on sale in the UK. Euromonitor is a private research company that provides sales data collected from primary and secondary data sources, including store audits, interviews with companies, publicly available statistics and company reports [8]. Philippines. ‘The sugar tax on drinks is not a tax on customers, it is a tax on manufacturers. Soft drinks containing more than five grams of sugar per 100ml; A higher tax band for drinks containing more than eight grams of sugar per 100ml. In April 2018, the United Kingdom introduced a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), with 2 bands of taxation: beverages containing 5–8 g added sugar/100 mL are taxed at 18 p/L and those with ≥8 g at 24 p/L ( 1 ). By pairing composition data with sales data, we were able to capture not just what is available, but what is sold, and the net impact on total sugar sales. here, the tax rate is high (almost double the average UK rate), it applies to soft drinks containing sugar and artificial sweeteners, and it is fully passed through to prices. … Our results also confirm that the SDIL currently only applies to a small percentage of the soft drinks that are available in the UK grocery market; control drinks make up over a third of the available soft drinks, and, by February 2019, only 15% of the intervention drinks were being levied (the remaining 85% had sugar levels lower than the levy sugar threshold). The research team looked at stock returns of companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the beverage sector, excluding private label producers and eliminating alcoholic beverage manufacturers. Article  These data were scraped on the same date (13 December) for four consecutive years (2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018). L. K. Bandy. The total volume sales of bottled water and products exempt from the SDIL rose by 23%. Once adjusted to exclude zero-sugar products, our data shows the absolute mean content of energy drinks fell by 30% over the same time period, while the sales-weighted mean fell by 49% (9.6 g/100 ml in 2015 to 5.9 g/100 ml in 2017). contain more than 5 g/100 ml of sugar) fell by 50%, while volume sales of low- and zero-sugar (< 5 g/100 ml) drinks rose by 40%. For Pepsi, sugar-free Max rose 17%. 2016;6(11):e010874 [cited 2019 Jan 29] Available from: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/11/e010874#ref-31. 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