One lump or more?

Aware that I have an interest in the food and drink industry, I received a message from a friend this morning alerting me to the news about (depending on which news outlet you read) the ‘shocking’, ‘scandalous’, ‘staggering’ and ‘dangerously high’ levels of sugar found in UK coffee shop drinks.

I am in no way condoning the amount of sugar – up to 99g, which equates to 25 teaspoons – found in certain drinks, however I am surprised to see it make front page news this morning given that a few months ago, these news outlets covered the same story but with a Christmas angle. Headlines included: ‘Christmas coffees contain up to ONE HUNDRED grams of sugar’ and ‘Your Christmas coffee contains a shocking amount of sugar’.

A quick Google search returns similar results from 2013, too: ‘Christmas drinks from coffee chains contain as much as TWENTY teaspoons of sugar’; and a 2007 story, ‘Don’t be a latte fatty – the awful truth about your daily caffeine hit’, contains nutritional information from some of the worst offenders.

I appreciate that it’s disappointing to see no change from the high street chains which have promised to focus on sugar reduction, however, it seems to bring the question of consumer education into focus again – what kind of sugar and calorie content can be expected from a large, full fat milk and high sugar syrup containing, whipped cream and sprinkle topped drink? Not only that, but the companies in question do display nutritional information, so to suggest – as one report has done – that they are ‘concealing’ these sugar levels is untrue.

As I said, I am not justifying the sugar content, and certainly at a time when sugar is under such scrutiny it would be good to see proactive steps taken to reduce such levels, however, the shock this ‘news’ appears to have been met with today does strike me as another example of why consumer education is so important.