Sugar: Consumption
(asked on 12th October 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the amount of sugar consumed by people over 65-years of age and the health implications of that level of consumption.
The most recent data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), published in September 2016, show that men and women aged 65 years and older derived 11.4% and 10.2% respectively of their total dietary energy from sugars. This is more than double the level recommended by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition in its report ‘Carbohydrates and Health’ report published in July 2015 which recommended that the intake of free sugars should not exceed 5% of total dietary energy. The report is available at the following link:
The sugars included in the NDNS assessment are those added to food during manufacture or cooking in the form of table sugar, honey or similar products, or released from the cell structure of food during processing, such as the sugars in fruit juice.