The British food industry has become unsuccessful to accomplish a voluntary target of alleviating sugar contents in its products by 20%, leading some disparagers to demand for more strict and rigorous course of action.
Public Health England, which made the 20% reduction proposal in 2016, recently issued a report informing that the nation’s food industry has accomplished only about 3% of the sugar-trimming goal. It evinced that tough and powerful measures like tax imposition might be required.
The one field where cutting down of sugar has been accomplished in the UK is the soft drinks, which altogether have cut down 44% of the sugar use when compared to that of 2015.
A major impetus was the tax on sugar in soft drinks which came in force in 2018 that culminated at 24 pence (31 cents U.S.) per liter on soft drinks containing more than 8g of sugar per 100ml of the drink.
Consumer health favours in the UK point to the imbalance between food and soft drinks as evidence that a voluntary methodology doesn’t seem fruitful. However, hurdles to a more stringent approach includes the unwillingness of Britain’s Conservative Party government to inflict taxes on business, and the hardship involved in eliminating sugar from formulations to be used in manufacturing of certain products such as baked goods.