UK health targets threaten size of chocolate bars（672 words）

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UK health targets threaten size of chocolate bars（672 words）

By Scheherazade Daneshkhu,

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The size of chocolate bars and packs of sweets in the UK is set to get smaller if manufacturers are to meet government-set targets to cut sugar by 20 per cent, according to a report published on Thursday.

Public Health England, which published the report on how to achieve the targets, said that manufacturers could choose to reformulate their products with less sugar; shift sales towards lower sugar alternatives; or cut portion sizes.

However, a table in the technical report, highlighted only portion control as the most effective way to reduce the sugar content in chocolate bars and sweets.

Large chocolate manufacturers, including Mondelez, manufacturer of Toblerone and Mars, have already been shrinking the size of their chocolates, while leaving the price unaltered to protect profit margins as the weak pound has pushed up commodity prices.

Mars cut the size of packets of Maltesers chocolates by 15 per cent this week, for the second time in four months.

Tim Rycroft, head of corporate affairs at the Food and Drink Federation, the industry group, said that further shrinkage risked a consumer backlash. “When manufacturers have reduced portion sizes, they have been portrayed as ripping off the consumer,” he said.

He said it was “very unlikely” that all companies would achieve the 20 per cent sugar reduction target, including the 5 per cent reduction set for this August, across the nine categories of food identified by the government as contributing the most sugar to children’s diets.

These are chocolate, sweets, yoghurts, cereals, biscuits, cakes, puddings, spreads and ice cream.

“I’d say tone down the 20 per cent by 2020 — say it’s a direction of travel,” he added.

While the industry wants softer measures, MPs have criticised the government for failing to detail what action it will take if manufacturers fail to meet the targets.

In a report published on Monday, the Commons health committee said it was “extremely disappointed” that the government’s childhood obesity plan, published in August last year, had not included stronger measures.

Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, the government agency, rejected this on Thursday, saying: “This is the most ambitious childhood obesity plan in the world.”

He said he believed that the voluntary measures would succeed, citing a similar salt reduction programme that has seen the amount of salt in a loaf of bread in the UK fall by 50 per cent compared to a decade ago.

Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at the government agency, added that mandatory targets represented a legal minefield. “It would tie us up in knots for years because we’d have to define everything,” she said.

Nestlé said it would be launching a new version of its KitKat wafer bars next week, with less sugar but extra milk and cocoa, as part of its initiative to reduce sugar in its confectionery brands by 10 per cent by 2018.

The Swiss food group has already downsized KitKat, having reduced its weight to 41.5g from 45g in January.

Mr Selbie said that Public Health England would judge the success of the sugar reduction programme on a sales-weighted basis by taking into account both the amount of sugar in a product and the volume of that product sold.

This would mean that manufacturers would not be able to say they had met the target if they cut sugar by 20 per cent from a “niche” product, while selling “huge custard cakes”, he added.

Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London and chairman of Action on Sugar, the pressure group, said: “We congratulate PHE’s tremendous achievement on setting coherent and achievable sugar reduction targets in such a short space of time. However, the missing factor in this report is how these targets will be enforced.”

One in every five five-year-olds and one in every three 11-year-olds is overweight or obese, representing an “urgent crisis in childhood obesity”, Mr Selbie said.

The government’s sugar levy on soft drinks, which comes into force in April next year, is also aimed at tackling childhood obesity.

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