But in food, for all of its inherent ‘evilness’, sugar acts more than just as a sweetening agent. Its functionality makes it a vital ingredient. Replacing with HIS then necessitates the addition of a bulking agent, eg maltodextrin, maltitol, etc – also with negative undertones; allergic reactions, weight gain, bloating and flatulence in the former and stomach and abdominal pain in the latter. This, in turn, leads to negative label perception.
Public Health England (PHE), a Government organization, has now turned its attention to sugar levels in food. The intention is to reduce sugar content by 20% by 2020. More importantly, PHE also recognize the importance of calorie, salt and saturated fats reduction. These are initiatives that must be applauded and surely will be the first steps to even greater future decreases. It should be noted that the vast majority of the industry are working on reducing sugar and, generally speaking, there has been positive consumer acceptance.
But how will PHE measure success in this initiative? Total sugar content across all products? For best selling goods? Whilst the food manufacturers have been seen to make progress in sugar reduction, it must be noted that these haven’t been on existing products. For example, Haribo have launched a new range of 30% lower sugar but haven’t changed, say, Starmix. Equally, Nestlé’s attempt is a new Wowsers product and not, say, Kit Kat. This would make understanding progress somewhat tricky.
Figure 1: Paper Headine (Daily Mail)
The expected next step is that television advertising will be restricted for high calorie products, again drawing parallels with the tobacco industry. Inevitably, communication on ‘bad’ foods will be restricted in the future but it would be nebulous to believe this will have as much impact as it did for the cigarette world.
This is a very interesting time to be working in the food & beverage sector, as we see how manufacturers have responded and intend so to do in the future. But key is that product users have a better understanding of what they consume, meaning that the industry’s responsibilities have to be more than just product reformulation.
Tim Levicki E:
tim.levicki@adm.com T: +49 151 6238 2323
Source:
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FBdfb0jECcAAJKH9.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fskynews%2Fstatus%2F421046785985900544&do cid=B-CaIBgG4d5lGM&tbnid=nwxpPRmPVRy7oM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjJ6a-mma3bAhWJ0aYKHQLmC_sQMwg9KAAwAA..i&w=599&h=806&bih=643&biw=1366&q=sugar%20is%20the%20new%20tobacco%20daily%20 mail&ved=0ahUKEwjJ6a-mma3bAhWJ0aYKHQLmC_sQMwg9KAAwAA&iact=mrc&uact=8
5 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | May/June 2018
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