Reducing sugar in drinks knocks off only few calories: Study

Two separate pieces of research published on Thursday in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal found that either approach can lead to a drop in calories of between about 16 and 39 a day. 

Graham MacGregor, who led the UK study as professor of cardiovascular medicine and chairman of the Action on Sugar campaign group, said the positive impact of calorie reduction could be dramatic across a large population over several years, even if its effect was not strong on an individual level. 

A gradual reduction in drinks’ sugar content over five years, without replacing it with artificial sweeteners, is the best approach, he suggested. His team’s research used predictive modelling to assess the potential impact of a 40 percent reduction in free sugars added to drinks over five years in Britain. 

The results showed this would lead to an average drop in energy intake of 38.4 calories a day by the end of the fifth year, leading to an average reduction in body weight of 1.2 kilograms in adults. 

This, the study found, would result in some 500,0000 fewer adults being overweight and a million fewer being obese - which in turn would prevent between 274,000 and 309,000 obesity-related type 2 diabetes cases over the next two decades. 

In the second study in Mexico, researchers analyzed the actual effect of a 10 percent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks introduced in January 2014. They found it was associated with a 12 percent reduction in sales of taxed drinks and a 4 percent increase in purchases of untaxed drinks a year after it was implemented. 

Tom Sanders, a professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London said “This study shows a fall of 36 millilitres per head per day, he said. “This is equivalent to about 1 sugar cube (16 calories), which is a drop in the caloric ocean.”