Leaders of the soft drinks industry have recently pledged to cut the calories in their products to help improve the public’s health. While it has been recognised that soft drinks contribute the calorific content of only about 3% of the average consumer’s diet, the industry has pledged to help ensure that the nation consumes healthier drinks.
What Is the Pledge?
The Calorie Reduction Pledge is a commitment made by the leading players in the soft drink industry to change their products to make them healthier and less calorific. This is being done in a number of ways.
Drinks producers, such as Coca Cola, the Feel Good Drinks Co. and Lucozade Ribena Suntory have pledged to reduce the number of calories in some of their products and ranges. For example, Britvic has stopped producing the full-sugar versions of their Fruit Shoots – a popular children’s drink – and by doing so will remove 2.2 billion calories from the children’s soft drinks market.
Some of these companies have also promised to increase marketing of their healthier drinks options. Coca Cola, Britvic, PepsiCo and A G Barr have all agreed to update their marketing strategies to make lower-calorie drinks more prominent in their advertising campaigns.
Major drinks companies and retailers have also created campaigns to educate children and young people about leading active lifestyles. They hope that this, in addition to the calorie-reduction pledge, will help to lower the rate of childhood obesity in the UK.
Several major high street retailers have promised to reduce the calories in their own-brand soft drink ranges. For example, ASDA has promised to reduce 22% of the sugar in its own-brand range of soft drinks, resulting in the removal of 3.25 billion calories and 814.2 tonnes of sugar from soft drinks market.
What Impact Will This Have?
The aim of the pledge is to help tackle health problems such as obesity and heart disease. Supermarkets, corner shops, bars and cafes will all stock lower-calorie products, while drinks from any draught soft drink supplier, such as empireuk.com/, will be healthier and better for consumers’ overall health.
Soft drink producers have publicised the nutritional information about their products for years, and together with this pledge, they hope to vastly improve the healthiness of products and the public well-being.