Objectives: To investigate changes in mean sugar content of non-alcoholic beverages (overall and sugar-sweetened beverages) available for purchase in Australia and to compare signatories versus non-signatories of the Australian Beverages Council voluntary pledge from 2018
Design: Retrospective observational study
Setting: Australia
Participants: About 1,500 non-alcoholic beverages per year included in the FoodSwitch Monitoring Datasets for 2015-2019
Results: Overall, mean sugar content fell by 1.3g/100mL (17.1%) from 7.5g/100mL in 2015 to 6.2g/100mL in 2019. SSBs have accounted for about 56% of all beverages available for purchase since 2015. Between 2015 and 2019, the sugar content of SSBs dropped by about 10% (0.8g/100mL). Soft drinks and milk-based drinks were the categories with the largest decrease in sugar content. The greater reduction in sugar observed for beverages overall than SSBs suggests at least some of the overall decrease in sugar content is due to the appearance of new products with low or no-sugar rather than reformulation. Over the same period, beverages with added non-nutritive sweeteners increased from 41% to 44%. The decrease in sugar content for all beverages and SSBs was, in general, larger for non-signatories than signatories of the voluntary industry pledge.
Conclusions: Between 2015 and 2019, the small reduction in sugar content of non-alcoholic beverages in Australia resulted from the combined effects of introducing low or no-sugar products and reformulation of some categories of SSBs. Further policy and regulatory measures are required to reap the most benefit that sugar reduction among non-alcoholic beverages can bring to population health.