Put down that syrupy coffee and spit out your Danish - the latest worrying news from Public Health England is that British children are now consuming their own bodyweight in sugar every year. Happy first day back, everyone!
PHE are reporting that children aged between four and ten are now consuming up to 22kg of sugar every year - which is about as much as a healthy child might weigh. The 22kg is roughly equivalent to 5,500 sugar cubes – with soft drinks, biscuits, buns, cakes, breakfast cereals, confectionery, fruit juices, pastries and puddings being the main culprits.
What's more, in 2013, almost a third of five-year-olds and almost half of eight-year-olds were showing signs of tooth decay - which is surely enough to make you reconsider your Kit-Kat break. Tooth decay was the most common cause of hospital admission for five to nine year olds, while obesity costs the NHS £5.1bn per year. Gulp.
Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist for Public Health England, said: “Children are having too much sugar. This can lead to painful tooth decay, weight gain and obesity, which can also affect children’s well-being as they are more likely to be bullied, have low self-esteem and miss school.
While PHE are particularly worried about children, us grown-ups aren't saintly about sugar, either. Apart from contributing to weight gain and even Type 2 diabetes, sugar is also your skin's worst enemy, speeding up the ageing process, and of course, destroying our teeth.
To help stop us in our sugary tracks “Sugar Smart campaign”, Change4Life, ever the early adopters, have launched a free app that lets you scan the barcode of say, a yoghurt or cereal bar, and tells you the amount of sugar it contains to help you make good choices.
Don't beat yourself up for having a sweet tooth - humans are, from an evolutionary perspective, pre-programmed to find sugar delicious because it signals energy to our bodies. That being said, seeing as very few of us are currently scavenging for food or wrestling sabre-tooth tigers, cutting down on the sweet stuff can't hurt.