Brazil keen on getting rid of sweet tooth

SAO PAULO. Brazil may be the world’s largest sugar producer and exporter, but its citizens are turning to Google to figure out how to get rid of their sweet tooth.

The number of Brazilians looking up “sugar free” on the platform is exploding to the highest level in more than a decade, according to Google Trends data cited by UK trading firm Czarnikow.

That might help to explain why the nation’s sugar consumption dropped 2.9 per cent in 2020 from a year earlier, outstripping the global decline of 2.2 per cent, according to Czarnikow. In Brazil, there wasn’t tax increase on sugary products or other governmental measure to discourage the consumption as there was in Thailand and Mexico, for example, Czarnikow said in a report. That “suggests that increased awareness of sugar intake can take hold in any country,” the report said.