Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra said: “Not only has this advice been manipulated by the food industry for profit, but it is actually a risk factor for obesity and diet-related disease.”
He is calling on the Health Department and the UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition to “act swiftly” with stronger warnings about rising obesity and the increasing prevalence of Type 2 diabetes.
Simon Capewell, professor of clinical epidemiology at Liverpool University, added: “The scientific evidence is increasingly clear.
“Refi ned sugars added to junk food and sugary drinks represent a major risk to health.”
He went on: “Tobacco has now been successfully controlled by targeting the ‘three As’ – afford ability, acceptability and accessibility. Surely our kids deserve a similar level of protection from refined sugars?”
In 2003 the World Health Organisation stated that “added sugars” should contribute no more than 10 per cent of total energy intake a day.
Since then this nutritional advice has formed the basis of UK food labelling,
which says total sugars should be no more than 90g a day – equal to 22.5 teaspoons of sugar.
Dr Malhotra, of the Royal Free Hospital in London, last night argued that the advice was “in desperate need of emergency surgery” because it implies this is what people should be consuming, rather than it being an upper limit.
In 2009 the American Heart Association stressed an upper limit of 100 calories a day from added sugar for a woman (six teaspoons) and 150 calories for a man (nine teaspoons).
Dr Malhotra said the food industry “continues to adopt strategies to deny sugar’s role as a major causative factor in what now represents the greatest threat to our health worldwide: diet related disease.”
“It is therefore almost impossible for consumers to determine the amount of added sugars in foods and beverages,” he said.
Gavin Partington, director-general of the British Soft Drinks Association, said: “The nutritional content of soft drinks is clearly stated on the label, and nutritionally there is no difference between sugars that are added and those that are naturally occurring: the body treats them as just the same.
“Sugar-sweetened soft drinks provide only two per cent of calories in the average diet, and consumption of soft drinks containing added sugar has been in decline even while obesity rates have been rising.
“We recognise our industry has a role to play in the fight against obesity, which is why soft drinks companies have been reducing the calorie content for many years, and currently more than 60 per cent of all soft drinks contain no added sugar.”
