Sweet nightmares: a guide to cutting down on sugar
Many teenagers drink a can of soft drink a day. With around nine teaspoonfuls of sugar in a can, this alone pushes them over recommended guidelines with scant (if any) nutritional benefit. If price persuaded them to choose diet versions instead, it would make a real difference to their health. PHE has suggested taxing sugary soft drinks at 20%; others believe it should be higher. “The tax should be 50% if it is to reduce consumption,” says Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum.
The graphic shows the number of tea-spoons of sugar in various foods:
Questions:
- What is the problem with using these figures? (If you would ordinarily have a muffin, if you replace it with biscuits, how many biscuits would you eat?)
- Which has the most sugar by volume? (You could calculate it per 100g, or per 1g.)
- Is it worth calculating how much sugar there is per hundred grams? Or per g? (It might not be - because you won't eat 100g of Salad Cream in one sitting but you might have 7 biscuits.)
