How we eat 100 tons of cheap sugar every day
SCOTS are buying the equivalent of almost 110 tons of sugar every day in cut-price junk food and drinks.
A new analysis has shown shoppers are picking up the equivalent of 4.3million chocolate bars or 3.1million cans of cola at ‘discounted’ prices daily.
Cancer Research UK, which carried out the analysis, called on the Scottish Government to li mit supermarket price cuts and multi-buy offers on unhealthy food – insisting such action is necessary now to prevent thousands of people suffering cancer in later life as a result of obesity.
The charity’s Professor Linda Bauld also said that more needs to be done to make healthy food and drinks more affordable.
More than half of regular soft drinks and sweets bought in Scotland’s shops are ‘on offer’, while almost half of puddings and desserts and biscuits and more than one third of cakes and pastries purchased are also sold at a discounted price, the charity said.
These deals mean over the course of a year Scots buy cutprice soft drinks containing 13,456 tons of sugar and sweets containing 12,141 tons.
When biscuits, cakes, pastries and puddings are included, the overall total increases to around 39,700 tons, Cancer Research UK calculated – the equivalent of about 760 tons a week or 109 tons a day.
Professor Bauld, a cancer prevention expert based at Stirling University, said: ‘Obesity is the unpalatable cost of the cheap deals routinely served up in our shops.
‘It leaves a bad taste to know that such an enormous amount
‘Junk food offers hard to resist’
of discounted sugar is weighing so heavily on the nation’s health.
‘We need urgent action now to prevent thousands of cancers in the future.’
The Scottish Government is due to publish a new obesity strategy later this year, which Professor Bauld said would be a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity to introduce measures that will have a profound impact on our lives’.
She added ‘We know that less healthy foods and drinks are more likely to be bought on promotion than healthier foods, and anyone who regularly navigates the aisles knows how hard offers on junk food are to resist.
‘And with studies showing the most deprived in our society are more often obese and less likely to get their five-a-day of fruit and vegetables, much more needs to be done to make healthy options affordable instead.’
Being overweight is linked to a higher risk of many types of cancer, including cancer of the breast, bowel, womb, kidney and liver.
A Scottish Government spokesman said last night ‘Tackling obesity is a top priority for this Government and we are absolutely committed to reducing the deeply ingrained health inequalities which persist in Scotland.
‘The Scottish Government continues to engage with the food and drink industry on action to offer healthier choices, including rebalancing promotions and reducing added sugar.
‘We recognise the need to shift the emphasis from dealing with the consequences of a poor diet to tackling the underlying causes, which is why we have consistently called on the UK Government to ban junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed, a move we believe would greatly reduce children’s exposure to the marketing of unhealthy food and drink.’