Abstract
Various and inconsistent definitions for free and added sugars are used in the consideration and assessment of dietary intakes across public health, presenting challenges for nutritional surveillance, research, and policy. Furthermore, analytical methods to identify those sugars which are not naturally incorporated into the cellular structure of foods are lacking, thus free and added sugars are difficult to estimate in an efficient and accurate way. We aimed to establish a feasible and accurate method that can be applied flexibly to different definitions. Based on recipe disaggregation, our method involved five steps and showed good repeatability and validity. The resulting Free Sugars Database provided data for seven components of sugars; (1) table sugar; (2) other sugars; (3) honey; (4) fruit juice; (5) fruit puree; (6) dried fruit; and (7) stewed fruit, for ~9000 foods. Our approach facilitates a standardized and efficient assessment of added and free sugars, offering benefit and potential for nutrition research and surveillance, and for the food industry, for example to support sugar reduction and reformulation agendas.
Highlights
The largest differences occurred with table sugar, other sugar, honey, and stewed fruit, the magnitude of the difference was small, and even smaller for the added sugar and free sugar combinations which are added sugars, free sugars (WHO)
The largest difference among the added sugar and free sugar combinations was for free sugars (SACN) as the definition is more expanded (Table 2)
For added sugars and free sugars, only 2–4 foods (4–8%) among the 50 formulations had a difference between the known formulation values and estimated values outside the limit of agreement, and the highest difference was in a fruit snack roll and a cereal bar with apricot which contained multiple sugar-rich ingredients
Summary
Increasingly, countries are taking steps to monitor and decrease population sugar intake through public health dietary guidance, targets and recommendations [8], and measures like taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (UK [9] and Mexico [10]) and sugar reduction and reformulation agendas (UK [11] and Norway [12]). In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued dietary guidelines with revised recommendations for ‘free sugars’ intake [3]. Government and public health policy varies in the types of sugars specified in the detail of dietary guidelines [14]; there are a range of definitions of sugars used in research to identify and assess sugar intake: . The sugar declared on nutritional panels of food labels always refers to ‘total sugars’ [15]
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