Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to encourage people to ingest lower amounts of (a) free sugars, (b) sugar-sweetened beverages, (c) added fructose and (d) polyols.

Many of the key measures in our childhood obesity plan will have an impact on reducing sugar intake across all age groups. These include the soft drinks industry levy, sugar reduction and wider calorie reformulation programme, restricting promotions of fatty and sugary products, calorie labelling in restaurants, and banning the sale of energy drinks to children, which will improve our eating habits and reduce the amount of sugar we consume.

Public Health England’s flagship social marketing campaign, Change4Life, supports the Government’s sugar reduction agenda. In recent years there have been a number of Change4Life campaigns to encourage families to cut down on sugar, including Sugar Swaps (2015), Sugar Smart (2016), Be Food Smart (2017) and a healthier snacking campaign in 2018. These campaigns work alongside other One You campaigns encouraging adults to adopt a more healthy diet.