It is despite breakfast cereals and yoghurts having celebrated the largest reduction in sugars between 2015 and 2020 as part of the Government’s Sugar Reduction Programme, which is still shy of the 20 per cent target they were supposed to achieve.
Action on Sugar, an expert group based at Queen Mary University of London, which carried out the research says that given that just nine cereals and six yoghurts surveyed were low in sugars and only four cereals were low in both sugars and salt, child friendly packaging on products that have high or medium sugar contents, salt and/or saturated fat so be ‘completely removed’.
The research also finds:
- Nestle, Lidl and Aldi have the highest sugars, on average, across their cereals and yoghurts targeted at children.
- Unlike TV advertising of unhealthy foods targeted at children, there are no restrictions in place for product packaging. The group says that a ‘potential solution lies in redirecting such visually captivating packaging strategies towards healthier food products, which are sold in plain packaging targeted at adults.
Registered nutritionist, Dr Kawther Hashem, campaign lead at Action on Sugar, said, ‘Given the soaring numbers of under-18s suffering weight-related health problems and tooth decay being the leading cause of child hospitalisation, now is the time for companies to be forced to remove child-appealing packaging from products that are misleading parents and making our children unhealthy and sick.’
