A study published in The BMJ has shown that children and adolescents across the world consumed on average 23 per cent more sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) in 2018 than they did in 1990, with a corresponding rise seen in the prevalence of obesity among young people.
Unhealthy diets, especially intake of SSBs, play a crucial role in obesity. Defined in the study as any beverage with added sugars and at least 209 kJ per 237 g serving, SSBs include commercial or homemade beverages, soft drinks, energy drinks, fruit drinks, punch and lemonade – but exclude 100 per cent fruit and vegetable juices, non-caloric artificially sweetened drinks, and sweetened milk.
Although tracking the consumption of these drinks by children and adolescents is essential to understanding their impact on disease and the effectiveness of policies to control their consumption, recent national estimates of young people’s intake are unavailable for most countries.
To address this, researchers used data collected for the Global Dietary Database, which incorporated over 1200 national and subnational dietary surveys representing 185 countries, and from which 450 surveys from 118 countries included data on SSB intakes.
The study was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Heart Association, and Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología in Mexico.
Data were analysed for children and adolescents aged 3-19 years in 185 countries between 1990 and 2018 and grouped by age, sex, parental education, and rural or urban residence, with mathematical modelling used to estimate the average consumption of SSBs for each group.
What’s the damage?
The results show that intakes of SSBs among children and adolescents increased by an average of 23 per cent from 1990 to 2018, with the largest increases in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2018, the average global intake was 3.6 standard servings per week, ranging from 1.3 in south Asia to 9.1 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet 30 per cent of the 185 countries included in the analysis had an average SSB intake of 7 or more servings per week.
The authors noted that the increase in intake of SSBs among children and adolescents between 1990 and 2018 was nearly twice the increase seen among adults over the same period, and that measures specifically targeting marketing of SSBs to children and adolescents are critical.
The paper stated that even with the limited availability of dietary survey data from some nations, the findings should be taken as the best currently available estimates of SSB intake worldwide.
“Policies and approaches at both a national level and a more targeted level are needed to reduce intakes of SSBs among young people worldwide, highlighting the larger intakes across all education levels in urban and rural areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the growing problem of SSBs for public health in sub-Saharan Africa,” the report states.
“Our findings are intended to inform current and future policies to curb SSB intakes, adding to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
For further details, the full paper is available here.
