How far do they go in promoting healthy hydration?

0
How far do they go in promoting healthy hydration?

What’s the one thing that proponents and opponents in the bitter battle over sugar taxes can agree on? That sugar taxes, by themselves, are no silver bullet in the war against sugar.

If soda taxes reduce soda consumption, the question is then what people choose to drink instead. Researchers from Virginia Tech say that sugar taxes should be accompanied by strong healthy eating guidelines so that people know what to drink instead of soda.

They set out to analyse 93 taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages to find out how well governments did at promoting positive healthy hydration messages alongside the taxes.

Encouraging water consumption

The researchers looked at countries that brought in sugary-drink taxation between 2000 and 2023, and then analyzed the recommendations made by national dietary guidelines from various countries to see how they encourage people to replace sugary drinks such as soda with water.

They assigned a ‘healthy hydration recommendation score’ to rank how well governments had accompanied sugar taxes with dietary guidelines to ensure consumers completed their journey away from soda and towards something healthier.

This study focused on the promotion of water: although authors acknowledge other beverages can be considered as ‘healthy’.

Sugary beverages can include soda, fruit drinks, sports drinks and energy drinks (What is and isn’t covered by a soda tax is down to each country).

Regular consumption of sugary beverages is associated with low diet quality and contributes to unhealthy weight gain, obesity, and other health risks including: insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dental caries and cancer among children, adolescents, and adults.

link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *