The global diet is getting sweeter, particularly when it comes to beverages

If you check labels, you will find it is really hard to buy processed food w/o sugar added. Eg, almost impossible to find spaghetti sauce w/o sugar added.

Public Release: 1-Dec-2015
The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: The global diet is getting sweeter, particularly when it comes to beverages
The Lancet

A Personal View, published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, highlights that the global diet is getting sweeter, particularly when it comes to beverages. This Personal View paper is written by Professor Barry M Popkin, School of Public Health, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, and Dr Corinna Hawkes, City University London, UK.

Previous research has shown that consuming foods and beverages with added caloric sweeteners is linked to an increased risk of weight gain, heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Currently, 68% of packaged foods and beverages in the USA contain caloric sweeteners, 74% include both caloric and low-calorie sweeteners, and just 5% are made with low-calorie sweeteners only. The added sugar comes from hundreds of different versions of sugar, all of which have the same equal health effect, says Professor Popkin.

He expects that in the absence of intervention, the rest of the world will move towards a similar pervasiveness of added sugars in the entire packaged food and beverage supply, with added sugars of all kinds increasing rapidly in the diets of people living in developing countries, while many high-income countries, despite being among the highest sugar consumers, are beginning to see a slight decline in sugar consumption.

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Because of the major health risks, particularly weight gain and increased risk of diabetes, hypertension and many cardiovascular problems associated with added caloric sweetener consumption, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting major initiatives to reduce intake. Many governments have already implemented policies with this goal, including taxation, reduction of availability in schools, restrictions on marketing of sugary foods to children, public awareness campaigns and front-of-pack labeling.

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While the latest data show that many countries consume high levels of sugar-sweetened beverages, and other countries with lower intakes are seeing steep increases, the authors did find that consumption seems to be decreasing in countries with taxes on such products (e.g., Mexico, Finland, Hungary and France).

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