How to reduce sugar consumption?

Ms. Truong Tuyet Mai, Deputy Director of the National Nutrition, Ministry of Health, said that the consumption of sugary drinks has increased sharply over the years. According to Euromonitor 2023, total beverage consumption has increased 4 times from 1.59 billion liters in 2009 to 6.67 billion liters in 2023. In the coming period, it is estimated that the consumption of sugar drinks in Vietnam will increase by about 6.4% per year.

Part 330 ml of carbonated sugar drinks usually contain about 35 g of sugar, equivalent to providing about 140 kcal energy, while providing very little other nutritional value. According to WHO recommendations, one day should not be used in excess of 25 g of the diet. Thus, drinking a bottle of carbonated soft drinks has nearly twice the recommendation.

The unreasonable use of sweet drinks is determined as the cause of overweight and obesity. In addition, this beverage abuse also increases the risk and type 2 diabetes, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, hypertension.

Therefore, Ms. Mai said that it is necessary to intervene to reduce consumption as well as the harmful effects of this drink. In particular, imposing special consumption tax for sugary drinks is an important measure recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). “This helps propagate and educate to the people why sugary drinks are imposed on taxes, because it is not beneficial,” she said, adding that the special consumption taxpayer also helps people change their behavior, limit the consumption of sugar and use natural foods.

Up to now, more than 100 countries have imposed tax on sugary drinks. In Mexico, tax policy is estimated to help prevent 239,900 cases of obesity (39% of them are in children) after 2 years of implementation. Research in Thailand also shows that taxes will reduce overweight and obesity rates at 1.7%, 3.8% and 4.9% in three years, corresponding to the implementation of the tax rates of 11%, 20% and 25%.

In Vietnam, the Ministry of Finance is drafting a special consumption tax law (amended), of which soft drinks according to Vietnamese standards, with sugar content above 5g/100ml, is added to taxable subjects with a tax rate of 10%. However, WHO and the Ministry of Health said that the tax rate of special consumption tax at the rate of 10% on the factory price will have a very modest impact on the retail price. For example, the current beverage product is currently priced at 7,000-10,000 VND/1 bottle/can, after the taxation only increased by 350-500 VND/1 bottle/can. This is difficult to impact the reduction of consumption, not enough to affect the change of consumer behavior, leading to the failure to achieve the goal of reducing consumption for public health.

Therefore, WHO proposes to consider offering an increase roadmap for 2030 to be 40% of the factory price so that the retail price of sugar beverages has an increase of 20%, in order to reduce the ability to pay for this product and reverse the trend of rapidly increasing the consumption of sugary beverage products today.

In addition to imposing taxes, experts believe that restricting sugary drinks, especially children’s programs; Limit areas selling sugary drinks such as automatic water machines or school areas.