Ban all drinks but water from dinner table, parents told

Parents should only serve water with meals and ban fizzy drinks and juices from the dining table, in order to reduce their children’s intake of sugar, experts have said.

The warning was issued ahead of new scientific advice about how much sugar people should consume, as health officials consider new measures to reduce Britain’s unsafe levels of consumption.

There is rising concern that sugar is one of the greatest threats to health, fuelling an obesity time bomb and contributing to spiraling levels of diabetes.

Last month a national study found that children and teenagers are consuming around 40 per cent more added sugar than the recommended daily allowance – with fruit juices and fizzy drinks the chief culprit.

Public health experts said on Wednesday that families should introduce strict rules about such drinks, limiting juice intake to one small glass a day with breakfast, with a jug of tap water on the table for all other meals.

Prof Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health, Oxford University, said: “Drink water, that’s the very simple advice to parents. Encourage your children to stick with water.

“The biggest source of sugar across all age groups is sugar-sweetened beverages and those are an obvious target for action.”

She said sugary drinks had a particularly significant impact on obesity because children and adults ended to consume them in addition to their calorie intake from food, not in place of solid foods.

Prof Tom Sanders, Head of Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences Division, at King’s College London said: “The problem is a lot of people don’t drink water any more. At the dinner table keep it simple; just have water on the table – not pop, not juice, not squash.”

He said parents should stop buying soft drinks and squash cordials, and instead see them as an occasional treat.

Prof Sanders also said Britain could learn from the French, by restoring more structured meal times, instead of snacks on the go.

“We need to come to terms with more structured eating and rethink the way we eat,” he said.

“The French talk about food far more and spend far more time eating but actually have far less obesity so you can actually enjoy your food .. but its about eating less.”

He said Britain’s culture of “24/7 snacking” and “eating on the hoof” was fuelling an obesity epidemic, which has left British girls the most overweight in Europe.

On Thursday two reports will be published, setting out new advice from the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition’s on recommended sugar limits, alongside a raft of proposals by Public Health England (PHE) about how to help people reduce their sugar intake.

The quango is considering options including targets to reduce sugar content in some foods, as was introduced with salt, increased restrictions on advertisements for processed foods and a tax on sugary products.

Ministers have already indicated that they would rule out such taxes until there is more evidence from other countries that they make a significant impact.

A draft version of the PHE paper said sugary drinks have been described as a “low hanging fruit” for a sugar tax, highlighting research showing that a 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks “could reduce consumption and prevalence of obesity in adults by 1.3 per cent”.

Last month a league table of 22 nations found British girls and women under the age of 20 are the most overweight in Western Europe, with 29.2 per cent overweight or obese.

Of those, 8 per cent of the girls meet the clinical definition of obesity, having a Body Mass Index of 30 or above. An estimated 26 per cent of British boys under 20 are overweight and obese – placing them 10th.
 
     
Source The Telegraph