It was revealed that popular hot drinks containing a ‘shocking’ 25 teaspoons of sugar are being sold by the big names of high street coffee shop chains.
As we said, big names like Starbucks, Caffè Nero and Costa have been accused of fuelling a national obesity crisis with their famous and best selling sugar laden speciality drinks.
For example one large – or venti serving of a Hot Mulled Fruit drink from Starbucks, which comes with chai, orange and cinnamon, has 99g of sugar which is equating to 25 teaspoons and is more than three times the recommended maximum for an adult for an entire day.
Doctors and nutritionists recommend the maximum daily intake of added sugar for an adult should be 30g or around seven teaspoons.
A survey made by campaigning group Action on Sugar ranks this drink in a top five of sugar laden drinks.
Its survey of 131 flavored hot drinks found 98 per cent would receive a red label for high sugar content under guidelines drawn up by the Food Standards Agency.
And another surprising fact about this flavored drink is that contain the same amount or more sugar than Coca Cola, which is nine teaspoons per can – equivalent to seven chocolate biscuits.
Top offenders include the US chain’s White Chocolate Mocha with Whipped Cream, where a venti has 73.8 g – 18 teaspoons.
It was found that even its signature Hot Chocolate comes in a 60 g – 15 teaspoons.
Meanwhile Costa’s Chai favorite Latte Massimo has a whopping 79.7 g of sugar – 20 teaspoons.
And the list goes on with a large mocha from KFC has 58.8 g – 15 teaspoons – while a Caramelatte from Caffè Nero, measures 50.6 g – 13 teaspoons.
In some of these the sugar content, in the milk was found marginally inflated natural lactose sugar.
The campaign group requires form the supermarkets and manufacturers to cut the sugar content in food and drink and is calling for new legally binding targets.
The idea has the support of supermarkets through the British Retail Consortium, however there are doubts the Government will back the measure in the soon to be published Childhood Obesity Strategy.
The big influence for this kind of drinks have the coffee shops because there are more than 18,000 outlets selling an estimated 1.7 billion hot drinks a year.
Its chairman, Graham MacGregor, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, said: ‘This is another example of scandalous amount of sugar added to our food and drink.
‘No wonder we have the highest rates of obesity in Europe.
‘David Cameron now has all the evidence to make the UK the first country in the world to stop the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic.’
Kawther Hashem, a registered nutritionist and researcher for Action in Sugar, said: ‘Coffee shop chains must immediately reduce the amount of sugar in these hot drinks, improve their labelling and stop selling the extra-large serving sizes.
‘These hot flavored drinks should be an occasional treat, not an “everyday” drink.
‘They are laden with an unbelievable amount sugar and calories and are often accompanied by a high sugar and fat snack. It is not surprising that we have the highest rate of obesity in Europe.’
Action on Sugar suggests for an independent agency to be given responsibility for nutrition and implementing legally binding targets.
That kind of independent agency would be of great help because would reformulate food and drink to cut sugar content by 50 per cent and fat by 20 per cent within five years, and also would be responsible for banning of all forms of advertising and promotion of unhealthy foods and drinks to children and adolescents.
Controversially, the agency, along with the Treasury, would be responsible for implementing a sugar tax on drinks.
There was a quick feedback from the Starbucks and Costa, in which Starbucks said: ‘Earlier this year we committed to reduce added sugar in our indulgent drinks by 25 per cent by the end of 2020.
‘We also offer a wide variety of lighter options, sugar-free syrups and sugar-free natural sweetener and we display all nutritional information in-store and online.’
Costa said: ‘We take the nutritional balance of our food and drink very seriously and we have already taken significant steps to reduce the sugar content of our ranges. We intend to continue improving the balance of our product offerings while maintaining the high quality and great taste our customers expect. This April we will be setting salt and sugar reduction targets for 2020.’
Source: http://purehealthcore.com/
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