Public Health England endorses low calorie sweeteners’ use in sugar reduction and reformulation

ISA statement welcoming the publication of the technical report by Public Health England on sugar reduction

The International Sweeteners Association (ISA) welcomes the publication of the sugar reduction guidelines by Public Health England, ‘Sugar Reduction: Achieving the 20%’.

Public Health England (PHE) endorses low calorie sweeteners’ use in foods and drinks by recognising their helpful role in weight management, stating that: “replacing foods and drinks sweetened with sugar with those containing no or low calorie sweeteners could be useful in helping people to manage their weight as they reduce the calorie content of foods and drinks while maintaining a sweet taste. For this reason, PHE acknowledges that foods and drinks containing low/no-calorie sweeteners can be useful in helping to reduce calories.

The UK government is aiming for a 20% reduction in total sugar by 2020 as a part of efforts to tackle childhood obesity, and the PHE technical report puts forward three approaches that the food industry can take in order to meet this goal. Specifically, these include:

  • reformulating products to lower the levels of sugar present
  • reducing the portion size, and/or the number of calories in single-serve products
  • shifting consumer purchasing towards lower or no added sugar products

For more information, you may access the technical report by Public Health England entitled ‘Sugar Reduction: Achieving the 20%’ by clicking here.

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly necessary cookies

This option should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that each time you visit this site, you will have to enable or disable cookies again.

Third party cookies

This site uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us improve our website.