Parents in Liverpool will be given a clearer view of how much sugar popular drinks contain in a ground-breaking campaign launching in March.
For the first time, branded drinks, including Lucozade and Capri Sun, will be explicitly named in a poster campaign developed by Liverpool city council’s public health team setting out how much sugar, shown in cubes, each bottle contains. The distinctive displays will feature stand-out bottles and will be put up in high footfall areas for parents such as children’s centres, NHS walk-in centres, GP practices and health centres, as well as Alder Hey Children’s hospital.
Dr Sandra Davies, director of Public Health Liverpool, says: “We all know that sugar has moved higher up the health agenda and the team has been supporting the national Change4Life Sugar Swaps campaign which launched last year.
“People are now beginning to understand which products are more likely to have a high sugar content but we felt the time had come to literally offer an illustration of how much sugar was contained in specific brands of drink. Too much sugar can cause tooth decay, obesity and even type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers in the future.
“In 2016 we’re urging parents to be ‘sugar smart’ and they’re only going to be able to do this if they’re given clear information.”
26% of four- and five-year-olds in Liverpool are overweight or obese, rising to 38% of 10 and 11 year-olds. With an estimated 30% of children’s sugar intake coming from sugary drinks, including fruit juice, Liverpool’s campaign is nothing if not timely.
And, of course, obesity is not the only issue caused by too much sugar. Tooth decay is also on the rise: around 2,000 children in Liverpool will have had a decayed tooth extracted by the time they’ve reached their fifth birthday.
It’s not just younger children who are a concern. Sondos Albadri, reader and honorary consultant in paediatric dentistry at the University of Liverpool, says: “We are increasingly seeing children aged between 12 and 16 at the dental hospital.
“I had to remove 15 adult teeth on a 14-year-old recently. This may be one of the worst cases but is by no means a rare occurrence – we are removing more and more adult teeth on older children, and the common factor appears to be sugary drinks.”
As well as the distinctive posters, messaging will be supported by editorial pieces in the Liverpool Echo. However, as with any campaign, true success comes through direct engagement and local events have been held across the city with community food workers demonstrating healthy cooking as well as highlighting how detrimental sugar can be for children’s wellbeing.
Councillor Tim Beaumont, Liverpool’s mayoral lead for wellbeing, says: “Sadly Liverpool has had a lot of poor outcomes for health, with certain illnesses and conditions much higher than the national average. Among them are the problems caused by consuming too much sugar – tooth decay, obesity, diabetes, and certain cancers.
“A lot of the sugars consumed by families, and children in particular, come from what you might call hidden sources – sugary drinks and foods, and products that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to have much sugar in them. Our latest campaign is a way of helping people to start thinking about the amount of sugar in processed food and drink and to interpret what they read on labels so that they can take control of what they are consuming.”
Want to know how much sugar there is in other foods? You can download the Change4Life Sugar Smart app for free.
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