Would seeing 16 teaspoons of sugar stop you buying that soft drink?
Australian shoppers would see a confronting 16 teaspoons of sugar on the label of a 600-millilitre Coca-Cola bottle if the federal government adopted one of the more contentious options in its new sugar-labelling paper.
The federal government has released a consultation paper containing seven possible ways it can boost "contextual information about sugars" on food and drink labels to help consumers make healthier choices and curb soaring obesity rates.
Health and consumer groups have backed four: Lumping all sugar-based ingredients under "added sugars" in the ingredients list; explicitly stating the amount of added sugar in the nutritional information panel; "pictorially" displaying the amount of added sugar on front-of-pack; and displaying advisory labels on extremely sugary products.
"This is about transparency. I think people will be surprised by how much added sugar is in a healthy food like yoghurt or breakfast cereals," Alexandra Jones, a public health lawyer at the George Institute for Global Health, said.
“Added sugars are empty calories and a major contributing factor to the obesity epidemic, rising rates of type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.”
The World Health Organisation said no more than 10 per cent of total daily energy intake should come from added sugars, and the Australian Dietary Guidelines urges everyone to limit their intake of added sugar.
According to Choice, manufacturers are "disguising" sugar using as many as 42 different terms, including dextrose, treacle and muscovado.
The consultation paper, released by the Food Regulation Standing Committee at the request of state and federal health ministers in November last year, acknowledged "information about added sugars on food labels is limited, which limits consumers’ ability to make informed choices".
The other three options are: maintaining the status quo; educating consumers on how to read and interpret labelling information; and providing a "digital link" to a website.
Ms Jones said Australia should follow America's lead and require manufacturers to show added sugar information on nutritional information panels and ingredients lists.
"The second, fifth and 10th ingredient could be sugar under different names, so grouping these together would let us to see it's the No.1 ingredient at a glance," she said.
"In regards to showing teaspoons, it needs to work with other initiatives such as the Health Star Ratings (HSR). It might work well for drinks, but we don't want all the focus to be on sugar and allow it to detract from HSR."
Choice said visual labelling using teaspoons on sugary drinks was a must.
“Some teenagers are consuming 38 teaspoons of added sugar per day, equivalent to the sugar in four cans of Coke," Choice's Katinka Day said.
“It’s essential that we have labelling that allows people to easily identify the high level of sugar in these products, rather than letting companies get away with hiding this information."
Choice's research found consumers would be able to avoid 26 teaspoons of sugar each day - and up to 38.3 kilograms a year - if they could identify added sugars on food packs.
Jane Martin from the Obesity Policy Coalition said she also wanted advisory labels on foods that exceed a predetermined threshold for added sugars, particularly for sugary drinks.
"Studies have shown that text warning labels are among the most impactful," she said.
"Australian adults consume around 15 teaspoons of added sugar per day, with teenage boys averaging 23 teaspoons a day – and the biggest source of added sugar in the diet is sugary drinks."
The Australian Food and Grocery Council said it would assess the options, particularly in light of the successful adoption of HSR.
“The amount of total sugars still remains the overwhelming core piece of consumer information because the body does not distinguish between naturally occurring and added sugars from a nutritional point of view," a spokesman said.
Australian Beverages, which last month vowed to slash sugar by 20 per cent in seven years, said it couldn't comment.