Abstract
Scientific evidence of the association between free sugar consumption and several adverse health effects has led many public health institutions to take measures to limit the intake of added or free sugar. Monitoring the efficiency of such policies and the amount of free sugar consumed requires precise knowledge of free sugar content in different food products. To meet this need, our cross-sectional study aimed at assessing free sugar content for 10,674 pre-packaged food items available from major Slovenian food stores during data collection in 2015. Together, 52.6% of all analyzed products contained free sugar, which accounted for an average of 57.5% of the total sugar content. Food categories with the highest median free sugar content were: honey and syrups (78.0 g/100 g), jellies (62.9 g/100 g), chocolate and sweets (44.6 g/100 g), jam and spreads (35.9 g/100 g), and cereal bars (23.8 g/100 g). Using year-round sales data provided by the retailers, the data showed that chocolate, sweets, and soft drinks alone accounted for more than 50% of all free sugar sold on the Slovenian market. The results of this study can be used to prepare more targeted interventions and efficient dietary recommendations.
Highlights
A worldwide pandemic of obesity and metabolic diseases has raised concerns about the adverse effects of sugar intake above the recommended levels
This study was carried out as a starting point for future projects investigating free and total sugar sugar-content fluctuations in the food supply. While this cross-sectional study did not cover the entire intakes as well as potential sugar-content fluctuations in the food supply. While this cross-sectional national food market, a systematically inventoried subset of all foods and beverages found in the study did not cover the entire national food market, a systematically inventoried subset of all foods three largest grocery chains accounted for the majority of the Slovenian food supply of pre-packaged and beverages found in the three largest grocery chains accounted for the majority of the Slovenian foods and non-alcoholic beverages
We investigated a possible correlation between free sugar content and the sales data provided by the retailers
Summary
A worldwide pandemic of obesity and metabolic diseases has raised concerns about the adverse effects of sugar intake above the recommended levels. There is epidemiological evidence available that links the consumption of added and/or free sugar and especially sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) with several undesirable health effects such as dental caries [1,2,3,4,5], insulin resistance [6], type 2 diabetes [7,8], metabolic syndrome [7,9,10], cardio-vascular disease [11,12,13,14], fatty liver [15,16,17], and dyslipidaemia [14,18]. Several governmental and public health organizations have issued recommendations to reduce the intake of free sugars. The new WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines on sugar intake published in 2015 recommended a reduction in free sugar intake for children and adults to less than
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