But not all sugars are created equal
There are four types of sugar. Sucrose is crystallised
white sugar produced by the sugar cane plant and
can be found in households and foods worldwide.
While glucose is the primary source of energy your
body uses and every cell relies on it to function.
When you eat carbohydrates, your body breaks
them down into units of glucose. In contrast,
fructose is a simple sugar naturally occurring in fruit
and honey. Fructose is very sweet, roughly one and
a half times sweeter than white sugar. Whereas
lactose is a sugar found in milk.
What will the impact of sugar tax be?
The tax will hopefully discourage people from
consuming beverages which have no nutritional
value that are, in fact, harmful over a period of time.
One simply needs to look at statistics to see it’s a
step in the right direction. According to Statistics
SA, deaths due to Type 2 diabetes have consistently
increased every year – 4.1% in 2011; 4.4% in 2012
and 4.8% in 2013.
Writing in the South African Medical Journal, Wits
University Public Health Professor Karen Hoffman,
notes that the accumulated losses to South Africa’s
gross domestic product between 2006 and 2015
from diabetes, strokes and coronary heart disease
alone are estimated to be almost 1.9 billion US
dollars.
Earlier last year, WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret
Chan, remarked that lifestyle diseases worldwide
have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading
cause of mortality.
“This shift challenges traditional development
thinking, which has long focused primarily on
infectious diseases and maternal and child mortality
as priorities for international action. We continue
to support this focus, but need to make space for
additional challenges,” she said.
Will sugar tax provide the much-needed intervention
to help reduce the prevalence of lifestyle diseases?
Only time will tell.
HOW MUCH SUGAR IS IN YOUR DRINK?
5 g - 1 teaspoon
still water
cool drinks
energy drinks
0 teaspoons
7-9 teaspoons
per can
5-7 teaspoons
per can
33-44,3 g
Page 9
26-30 g
Bonitas Member Magazine 2016 Issue 4