San Francisco requires health warning labels on soda adverts

San Francisco has become the first city in the US to require warnings to appear on advertisements for soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages. Are there reasonable grounds for saying beverages with extra sugar cause obesity, diabetes and tooth decay and will warning labels make a difference? Below we discuss research published inBMC Public Healthwhich supports this basis.

San Francisco has become a pioneer in the USA with its new requirement that warnings are introduced to advertisements for soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages that appear on billboards, buses, transit shelters, posters and stadiums within the city. Radio and television adverts as well as the drink packaging itself are excluded from this requirement.

The labels will read: ‘WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. This is a message from the City and County of San Francisco.’

美国饮料协会(American Beverage Association)指出,这一决定违反了他们的第一修正案权利,因此提出了一个问题,即是否合理地指出警告标签将保护公共卫生。

Previous work has shown that advertisements for sugary drinks are one of the most prevalent forms of outdoor advertising. Anarticlepublished inBMC Public Healthshows there is a relationship between the percentage of outdoor food advertising and overweight/obesity. The authors of the study, who linked self-reported information on BMI and soda consumption with a database of directly observed outdoor advertisements, conclude that innovative strategies, such as warning labels, counter-advertising, or a tax on obesogenic advertising should be tested as possible public health interventions for reducing the prevalence of obesity.

A 2014study发表在《杂志》上解释了双盲干预试验以及详细的生化和临床研究如何证明,无论是食物还是饮料中的糖摄入量是龋齿的主要原因。基于精心收集的数据 - 包括日本的一项研究,每个牙齿都以每个人的年度间隔分开检查 - 该研究显示出明确的剂量反应,曲线呈曲线关系,使得总能量摄入量随着糖的能量的增加而增加。研究得出的结论是,公共卫生目标需要将糖摄入量设定为理想的摄入量,占总能量摄入量的3%,<5%作为实用目标。

Independent associations have been found between diabetes prevalence rates and per capita sugar consumption worldwide as explored in aBMC Public Healthpublicationin 2014. The results of the study, along with other previous similar studies, serve as a basis to limit the sugar content in drinks to help battle diabetes which has become a global epidemic.

But are tooth decay, diabetes and obesity our only concern when it comes to increased sugar intake? Caroline Diorio and colleagues found that sugar-sweetened beverage intake is positively associated with mammographic breast density among all women or limited to premenopausal women. Among all women, those who had a sugar-sweetened beverages intake of more than three servings per week presented a 3% difference in percent density compared with those who did not drink this type of beverage. Thiswork举例说明继续研究糖摄入量及其潜在的健康影响是多么重要,以便公众得到充分的了解,并可以提出努力以进一步为该主题提供卫生政策。

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