Estimated changes in free sugar consumption one year after the UK soft drinks industry levy came into force: controlled interrupted time series analysis of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (2011–2019)
Published in
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1978), July 2024
Nina Trivedy Rogers, Steven Cummins, Catrin P Jones, Oliver Mytton, Mike Rayner, Harry Rutter, Martin White, Jean Adams
Abstract
The UK soft drinks industry levy (SDIL) was announced in March 2016 and implemented in April 2018, encouraging manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of soft drinks. This is the first study to investigate changes in individual-level consumption of free sugars in relation to the SDIL.
We used controlled interrupted time series (2011-2019) to explore changes in the consumption of free sugars in the whole diet and from soft drinks alone 11 months after SDIL implementation in a nationally representative sample of adults (>18 years; n=7999) and children (1.5-19 years; n=7656) drawn from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey. Estimates were based on differences between observed data and a counterfactual scenario of no SDIL announcement/implementation. Models included protein consumption (control) and accounted for autocorrelation.
Accounting for trends prior to the SDIL announcement, there were absolute reductions in the daily consumption of free sugars from the whole diet in children and adults of 4.8 g (95% CI 0.6 to 9.1) and 10.9 g (95% CI 7.8 to 13.9), respectively. Comparable reductions in free sugar consumption from drinks alone were 3.0 g (95% CI 0.1 to 5.8) and 5.2 g (95% CI 4.2 to 6.1). The percentage of total dietary energy from free sugars declined over the study period but was not significantly different from the counterfactual.
The SDIL led to significant reductions in dietary free sugar consumption in children and adults. Energy from free sugar as a percentage of total energy did not change relative to the counterfactual, which could be due to simultaneous reductions in total energy intake associated with reductions in dietary free sugar.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 486. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 September 2024.
All research outputs
#58,852
of 26,740,027 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1978)
#44
of 4,661 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#832
of 308,053 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1978)
#2
of 29 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,740,027 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,661 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 27.0. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 308,053 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 29 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
