The Australian Beverages Council (ABCL) has rejected the Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) call for a sugar tax, saying “real-world evidence-based solutions were needed to address lifestyle health challenges” not “slapping another tax on the weekly shop of Australians”.
The AMA recommended the federal government add a tax of 40 cents on every 100g of sugar manufacturers add to drinks, which would be a 16-cent increase to the price of a regular can of soft drink.
The association said the health outcomes would be significant for individuals while also reducing future burdens on the health system.
ABCL CEO Geoff Parker said that as of the end of 2021, pledges such as Australia’s first Sugar Reduction Pledge have cut sugar content by more than 16 per cent.
“This significant progress is bringing speed and scale to a 20-year-long consumer trend away from regular sugar drinks in favour of low and no sugar varieties, showing an industry that is responding with pace to consumers’ desire for more choice in the drinks aisle of supermarkets or the convenience store fridge,” said Parker.
The AMA’s latest report on the issue, Why tax sugary drinks?, argues the tax is an effective preventative health measure and would reduce Australians’ consumption of sugary drinks, which are associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.
It shows an additional 40 countries and jurisdictions globally have adopted a sugar tax since the AMA’s first research report in June 2021 and includes a new focus on oral health. The report details how sugary drinks decay and erode teeth and highlights findings including a prevalence of dental caries in the baby teeth of 42 per cent (four in ten) of Australian children.
Parker said diet-related disease is complex and caused by many factors. All sectors of the shopping trolley must play their part in helping Australians make healthier choices, just as the nation’s largest non-alcoholic drink companies did when they signed Australia’s first Sugar Reduction Pledge in 2018. That pledge saw companies commit to reduce sugar across their portfolios by 25 per cent from 2015 to 2025.
“This sugar reduction is being driven by a range of initiatives, including reformulation, smaller pack sizes, and investing in a greater variety of low and no sugar products to meet growing consumer demand,” said Parker.
The 2022 Sugar Reduction Pledge report found that for the first time in Australia, no and low sugar options account for half of all sales, up from 47 per cent on the previous year. This reinforced ABCL’s longitudinal study findings that Australian’s non-alcoholic drink choices are changing, including the fact Australians now drink almost five times more bottled water than they did two decades ago.
In September last year, the beverage companies raised the agreed sugar reduction target to 25 per cent by 2025, up five percentage points on the target set in 2018.
The latest data from The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ shows that full sugar soft drink consumption accounts for less than 15 per cent of free sugar intake; and that plain bottled water consumption continues to rise – a 12 per cent increase over the recent 12-month reporting period.
Parker says these figures corroborate the results of the two previous Australian Health Surveys (1995 & 2011-12) which showed significant decreases in people consuming sugar-sweetened drinks in favour of drinks with no and low sugar including water.
“All the evidence demonstrates that each year people are already drinking less sugar-sweetened beverages. This is happening without a sugar tax, which risks increasing the cost of the weekly shop and placing more pressure on households grappling with the soaring cost of living.
“In 2023 we need innovative, real-world evidence-based solutions to address lifestyle health challenges rather than slapping another tax on the weekly shop of Australians. The drinks industry urges other categories in the shopping trolley to make their own commitments and play their part in helping people choose healthier options,” said Parker.
You can listen to the Food & Drink Business podcast episode with AusBev CEO Geoff Parker here.
