Where did summer go? Summer, with its often unbearable heat, always presents a nice opportunity to cool down with a sweet drink, whether it be lemonade, iced tea, or a piña colada. Throughout the course of my research project these past months, I spent the summer looking at sugary drinks, or better said that data behind our consumption of sugary drinks. What I found was maybe not so sweet and not so surprising.

For my project, I was looking at the alignment between national supply and intake (for vegetables, fruit, meat, and sugar) to dietary ideals. What I found was that both supply and intake for most of the food groups measured was well below ideal reference values. Only sugar was found to meet references across the board for both supply and intake. Of course, this can be caused due to data gaps that exist in regards to available dietary information, but it is still worrying that sugar alone (and with sugar-sweetened beverages the only sugary food measured for intake!) is the category that is meeting and exceeding reference targets.

Excess consumption of sugars leads to obesity and associated negative health outcomes. Consuming excess sugar even in small amounts (⩾10% of total calories) has been shown to be harmful, leading to weight gain, diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Nguyen et al. 2016). And as the world becomes more industrialized and processed foods become more readily consumed, consumption of sugars will most likely continue to increase (Popkin 2017).

One of the countries most negatively affected by consumption of sugary beverages is Mexico, where all age groups consume an average of 10% of their daily calories as sugary beverages (Malik et al. 2010). They also cause the largest absolute (405 deaths/million adults) and proportional (12.1%) deaths from SSBs across all countries (Singh et al. 2015). Speaking anecdotally from my own experiences as someone who comes from a Mexican background, sugary treats and drinks are everywhere. It’s very typical to drink soda for breakfast (sugary drinks are the norm for every meal) and to finish off breakfast with a sweet bread and sweet coffee. Sweet treats are readily available and consumed throughout the course of the day. Recently Mexico has taken steps to combat this issues, including passing laws that mark foods with an excess of sugars and banning advertisements for sugary treats. Only time will tell if these efforts are effective.

Working on this project was an interesting process. From learning how to use data visualization software to seeing the makeup of national dietary supply and intake, I feel like I learned a lot from this process. I hope that my findings may be of use in creating healthier, equitable, and sustainable food systems for the benefit of everyone.

References:

Malik, V.S., Popkin, B.M., Bray, G.A., Després, J.-P. and Hu, F.B. (2010) ‘Sugar-sweetened beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease risk’, Circulation, 121(11), 1356-1364, available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.876185.

Nguyen, P.K., Lin, S. and Heidenreich, P. (2016) ‘A systematic comparison of sugar content in low-fat vs regular versions of food’, Nutrition & diabetes, 6(1), e193-e193, available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nutd.2015.43.

Popkin, B.M. (2017) ‘Relationship between shifts in food system dynamics and acceleration of the global nutrition transition’, Nutrition reviews, 75(2), 73-82, available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuw064.

Singh, G.M., Micha, R., Khatibzadeh, S., Lim, S., Ezzati, M. and Mozaffarian, D. (2015) ‘Estimated Global, Regional, and National Disease Burdens Related to Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption in 2010’, Circulation, 132(8), 639-66, available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1161/circulationaha.114.010636.