Ministers should cap domestic sugar production to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis, according to a new report backed by health experts and environmental campaigners.
The UK grows and imports more than two and a half times the population’s maximum recommended intake of sugar, according to Sugar Pollution, a report by environmental campaigners Feedback Global and Action on Sugar, a group of specialists in medicine, nutrition and public health.
That oversupply creates incentives for food manufacturers to use more in their products and for British farmers to grow sugar beet rather than fruit or vegetables, the report argues.
The campaigners have called for a quota that would eventually cut sugar production in the UK by half, introduce tariffs on imports of sugar cane and refined sugar, and subsidise farmers to grow more fruit and vegetable crops.
They also say that sugar producers should be treated according to the “polluter pays” principle, similar to rules on product packaging. This would require sugar producers and manufacturers to pay the hidden health and environmental costs of sugar to society.
Jessica Sinclair Taylor, head of policy at Feedback Global and one of the report’s authors, said: “The underlying message of this report is that to tackle consumption and to tackle the problems caused by production, the current level of supply is just far, far in excess of what we need. We have lots of policy about the need to help people eat less, but nothing that focuses on the way that supply might drive and contribute to demand.”
Hattie Burt, senior policy and international projects officer at Action on Sugar, and another author of the report, said public health policies such as the sugar reduction programme from 2015 to 2020, which challenged the food industry to reduce sugar in everyday foods, had actually seen a 7.1% increase in tonnes of sugar sold.
“[Health policies] are never going to be enough, because you’ve got these trade and agricultural land-use policies which are trying to increase the amount of sugar. When you take a step back, part of the reason there is so much sugar in their products is because it’s highly available and relatively cheap.”
By 2022, 63.8% of adults in England were estimated to be overweight or obese, according to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, with 25.9% classified as obese. Frontier Economics estimates that obesity costs the UK about £58bn each year in disease, shorter lifespan and lost productivity.
Although obesity is caused by a range of factors, the prevalence of high-calorie foods that are high in salt, sugar and fat are part of the problem, and processed foods not perceived to be sweet can contain surprising amounts of sugar.
According to the Sugar Pollution report, the UK imports or grows 1.91m tonnes of sugar a year, but if the whole population ate the maximum recommended amount, it would be just 0.72m tonnes.
Just over half of the UK’s sugar supply is grown domestically by 2,300 farmers, mostly in the east of England and the east Midlands, and processed by British Sugar. The rest is imported – raw sugar cane, mostly from Brazil, or refined sugar or confectionery.
The amount of land used in the UK for sugar beet is about 100,000 hectares, almost as much as for the entire vegetable crop of 107,000 hectares.
“Farmers like beet because it’s a convenient crop for them,” said Sinclair Taylor. Other horticultural crops were bought by supermarkets, so “the price can fluctuate a lot over the year. With beet, there is a negotiated price set by the NFU and British Sugar. It’s also part of their rotation, so they also grow things like wheat and rapeseed. So farmers are making perfectly rational decisions – it’s just that the incentives are barmy.”
The report also highlights the environmental effects of beet growing. When beets are dug, topsoil sticks to the roots, which causes the loss of 464,000 tonnes of topsoil a year, the report says.
And for the last three years, ministers have approved the use of neonicotinoid seed treatments to prevent aphids spreading viruses that harm beets. Neonicotinoids have been banned in the EU and the UK because the chemicals are harmful to bees and humans, but the government allows derogations from the rules.
A spokesperson for British Sugar said it was “proud to be at the heart of the British beet sugar industry”.
“Sugar beet is an important part of our growers’ arable rotation, acting as a break crop and thereby improving biodiversity and returning organic material from sugar beet tops to the soil after the crop is harvested. Farmers do not receive any subsidies for growing sugar beet.
“Obesity continues to be a major public health issue in the UK, and one that we at British Sugar take extremely seriously. We remain fully committed to informing and educating people about sugar and the role it can play, as part of a healthy, balanced diet through our Making Sense of Sugar programme.”
