London — In British supermarkets these days, there’s a war being waged against sugar, with the U.K. this week extending its sugar tax to some coffee drinks and milkshakes in an ongoing effort to fight obesity.
“Actually, in the U.K., it’s the main reason why children would be admitted to hospital,” Dr. Kawther Hashem, a nutritionist who lobbied the U.K. government to levy a tax on sugary drinks, told CBS News of the sugar crisis.
“If you want to look at making a big impact on the population, well, where is it coming from?” Hashem said. “It was quite clear, the biggest contributor was soft drinks, so let’s start with soft drinks.”
The British tax went into effect in 2018, up to 30 cents per liter for 8 grams or more of sugar per 100 milliliters, depending on the drink’s sugar content. But instead of passing that cost on to the consumer, many manufacturers instead lowered their product’s sugar content to avoid the tax altogether.
As a result, the British version of some drinks are now very different to products with the same label in the U.S. In many cases, the sugar has been replaced with aspartame, an artificial sweetener.
This week, the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care announced that it was expanding its levy to include milk-based drinks, including milkshakes, flavored milks, sweetened yogurt drinks, chocolate milk and certain coffees. Companies have until January 2028 to comply with the new requirements.
“This is a levy on manufacturers and importers, which has led to companies acting by halving sugar content in popular drinks to avoid the tax,” the U.K. government said in its announcement Tuesday. “The government expects companies to do the same with the extension.”
The levy has applied to drinks with a sugar content of 5 grams per 100 milliliters. However, the new guidance will lower that threshold to 4.5 grams.
Among 10- and 11-year-old girls alone, the tax prevents 5,000 cases of obesity a year, according to a 2023 study from University of Cambridge researchers.
Jules Dunlop is an American mother who lives in the British countryside. She and her family love food, often posting about it on social media. They say they are definitely not health nuts.
“If we’re comparing junk food to junk food, automatically in the U.K. you’re going to get a healthier version of what’s available to you in the United States,” Dunlop said.
Dunlop says that it when it comes to taste, she “would never know the difference” between the same drink in the U.S. and U.K. She says eating less sugar has given her more energy and clearer skin.
“Just being able to have that baseline of less sugar here has made such a difference,” she says of living in Europe compared to the U.S. “And I just think an overall healthier lifestyle here.”
Some U.S. cities have also introduced a sugar tax, but without a national policy, it is unlikely that manufacturers in the U.S. will change the formulas of their drinks.
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