Diet and healthy weight: monitoring report 2019

Free sugars

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) analysis of published data from Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)^[16]

Latest results^[17]

• The percentage of total food energy contributed by free sugars^[18] has reduced slightly from 15% in 2001 to 13.8% in 2017/18.
• Intakes remain higher than the Scottish Dietary Goal of less than 5% of energy^[19].

Figure 12. Proportion of total food energy from free sugars, 2001-2017/18

Source
The UK Family Food survey is an annual publication which provides information on purchased quantities, expenditure and nutrient intakes derived from both household and eating out food and drink. FSS secondary analysis data for Scotland on free sugars is not available after 2015 due to the small sample size for Scotland. Since 2015 data on progress on the percentage energy from free sugars has been calculated from the figures published in the Defra Family Food Dataset (by combining both household and eating out data for Scotland). The small difference between the FSS and Defra values is likely to be due to consideration of the amount of food and drink wastage in the FSS calculation.

Equalities
Information on differences in food and nutrient intake by deprivation (using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)) is not available for Scotland after 2015. This is due to a reduction in sample size which limits sub-group analyses.

Geography available
Scotland level.

Rationale for including free sugars

These data are useful to monitor change in the proportion of adults and children consuming energy dense foods and progress towards the Scottish Dietary Goals. As noted above, prevalence of obesity indicates that energy intakes currently exceed energy requirements with associated health problems.

Factors influencing free sugars

Availability, cost, and access to different food types.