Abstract
Ultra-processed, pre-packaged foods are becoming a growing part of our diet, while displacing whole and minimally processed foods. This results in an increased intake of free sugar, salt, and saturated fats, that have a profoundly negative effect on health. We aimed to assess the trend in free sugar content in pre-packaged foods in Slovenia and evaluate the efficacy of industry self-regulations designed to combat the excess consumption of free sugar. A nation-wide data collection of the Slovenian food supply was performed in 2015 and repeated in 2017. In 2017, 54.5% of all products (n = 21,115) contained free sugars (median: 0.26 g free sugar/100 g). Soft drinks became the main free sugar source among pre-packaged goods (28% of all free sugar sold on the market) in place of chocolates and sweets, of which relative share decreased by 4.4%. In the categories with the highest free sugar share, market-leading brands were often sweeter than the average free sugar value of the category. This indicates that changes in on-shelf availability towards a greater number of healthier, less sweet products are not necessarily reflected in healthier consumers’ choices. Relying solely on voluntary industrial commitments to reduce free sugar consumption will likely not be sufficient to considerably improve public health. While some further improvements might be expected over the longer term, voluntarily commitments are more successful in increasing the availability of healthier alternatives, rather than improving the nutritional composition of the market-leading products. Additional activities are, therefore, needed to stimulate reformulation of the existing market-leading foods and drinks, and to stimulate the consumption of healthier alternatives.
Highlights
In the developed as well as in the developing countries, ultra-processed pre-packaged foods are representing an ever-greater share of our modern diet [1]
For the direct comparison of the total and free sugar content, we focused on five categories of particular interest, all comprising of an identical subset of products for both years
The exact free sugar content was calculated on a subset of 20,068 products, that made up a final database for the analysis
Summary
In the developed as well as in the developing countries, ultra-processed pre-packaged foods are representing an ever-greater share of our modern diet [1]. According to the NOVA food classification system, ultra-processed foods are inventions of modern food technologies, which contain very little or no whole foods and require little or no additional preparation before consumption [2]. Their main ingredients are usually isolated sugars, starches, oils, and fats, spiced with a combination of food additives to achieve desirable properties. From 2000 to 2013, the average increase in sales of ultra-processed goods among eighty different countries around the globe was 43.7%. In 2018, a cross-sectional study conducted by Monteiro and colleagues [5] reported that the average household availability of ultra-processed foods in Europe
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