Appearing on the BBC’s Panorama programme, BDA Chair Eddie Crouch highlights how options marketed as ‘healthy’ are loaded with sugar, causing tooth decay. We examined hundreds of these pouches – some aimed at infants just four months old - and many have more sugar than Coke.
Eddie said: “If we look at a carbonated drink, which has about 15g of sugar, we’ve got these pouches that are being advertised as healthy, they’ve got 4g of sugar more than the can of drink, which is really quite shocking.
It's obviously not all down to these pouches. But clearly, regular use and feeding of these pouches, with such high levels of sugar cause serious problems to the general health of children as they're growing up."
Prevention is at the heart of our profession - we need to see real action on labelling, marketing, and taxation. We must bring an end to the disingenuous claims made by companies and to push them reformulate their products.
Our call is on government to step up and force industry to do the right thing. The very same strategies that have been applied to tobacco need to be brought to bear on sugar.
