Comments on: Sugar intake from soft drinks is falling

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 21:53:09 +0000

Hi Jared
Our study looked at trends in sales of ready-to-drink, water-based beverages. This included all carbonated soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, iced tea, mixers, mineral water and plain bottle water. We were not able to get the data for fruit juice. Milk drinks (not water-based) and cordials (not ready-to-drink) were excluded. So understand the limits to our data.
We described this as a dynamic category as there are certainly several trends at play:
• Among sugar-sweetened beverages, the traditional sugary soft drink is in decline while energy drinks, sports drinks and iced tea have increased. However, intakes of the latter are still quite small. The overall impact is a considerable fall in sugar contribution from sugar-sweetened beverages over the last 15 years.
• Sales of plain bottled water have increased appreciably and sales of non-sugar soft drinks have increased too. People are buying more beverages overall.
I’m not bothered by not including milk drinks as consumption of these beverages has not been linked to weight gain over time. Pity we don’t have the juice data though.
Nevertheless, the above trends are consistent with the fall in the proportion of calories from sugar between 1995 and 2007 observed in children’s dietary surveys in Australia.
We will get a better picture when the latest data from the Australian Health Survey is released this year. We could certainly do with some facts on the table as the media is awash with opinion, much of it ill-informed or just plain biased.
Regards, Bill

By: Jared Pearson

Jared Pearson — Sun, 16 Feb 2014 20:45:02 +0000

Does your study chart Australia’s overall consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, or only sugar sweetened soft drinks?

For example, you mention that consumption of sugar sweetened soft drinks is declining, but could it be the case that people are switching to sugar sweetened alternatives like Iced Tea & Coffee, flavoured milk, sports drinks, Juice Boosts, and Starbucks?

By: Matthew P

Matthew P — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 07:04:38 +0000

Hi Brad, I’ve also noticed that there are brands of softdrink that claim reduce sugar by 30% and claim to make the difference up with Stevia.
These may be competing with better products like 0 calorie cola, because of the sneaky use of the word “natural”, while still giving people a massive dose of the sugar and empty calories they should be avoiding.

By: David Broadfoot

David Broadfoot — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 03:29:02 +0000

An important beneficial development that I have noticed is the more widespread availability of soft drinks that are (near) zero calorie, but *naturally* sweetened (with Stevia.) That gets rid of reluctance to switch to zero calorie soft drinks due to any health concerns about artificial sweeteners.

By: Carly Clyant

Carly Clyant — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 12:00:49 +0000

Hi Bill,
I am a Public Health Nutritionist/Dietitian who works in remote communities throughout NT and thought I would share my experience in the communities I service in relation to this topic.Throughout these communities (which is a small % of Australia’s population) sugar sweetened drinks are definitely more popular and overide the sales/consumption of non sugary drinks. From talking to store managers in community non sugary drinks particularly diet coke, coke zero and diet creaming soda have to be thrown out as they are past their use by date because they are not a popular item. I only learnt a couple of weeks ago that the shelf life for diet drinks is generally 6-9 months depending on the type of drink, storage conditions and brand. I found this very interesting as some store managers are reluctant to order a large range of diet soft drinks/beverages due to increased likely of wastage e.g diet cordial not available in store due to this reason. Freight and long travel times via barge obviously does not help the situation.
On the other hand, my local supermarket (which is a mining town) non-sugar drinks are generally sold out within a couple of days. Usually have to wait another week for more stock and need to be quick.
Interesting post, keep up the good work. Always look forward to reading your posts.
Carly

By: Trish Ryan

Trish Ryan — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 02:30:31 +0000

I find it hard to believe that sugar sweetened soft drinks only make up 45% of the soft drink sales. When I look at supermarket shelves and vending machines there is a huge variety of sugar sweetened beverages available but I guess that’s no indication of sales volume. Very interesting data! Have I misinterpreted something?
regards Trish

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:53:51 +0000

Couldn’t agree more David. It’s a pity that 19 years will have elapsed between this (coming) survey and the last national survey of adults. Regards, Bill

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:50:42 +0000

Hi Paul. In our analysis energy drinks were separated from soft drinks. Energy drink consumption is increasing, but off a very low base. Total intake of sugar-sweetened beverages is declining. Regards, Bill

By: David Meere

David Meere — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:08:54 +0000

I think the ABS nutrition survey results will give us a good idea of what is happening:
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3F108E2532A4E189CA257AA30014B6B7?opendocument
Due soon!
Then we’ll have something more concrete than the (old) apparent consumption etc navel gazing!

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 23:04:55 +0000

Just another thought.

In these surveys – are “energy drinks” considered a soft drink for the purpose of data collection, or are they placed into a different category.

Could a decline in “soft drinks” be replacement by “energy drinks”?