Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Foods from a Public Health Nutrition Perspective

In Germany, current efforts to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and foods focus largely on an improved nutritional education. From a Public Health Nutrition perspective, a range of internationally implemented environmental interventions are available. Improved front-of-package labeling enables the consumers to actively choose between alternatives. Further interventions guide - or nudge - consumer choices: interventions changing the default through voluntary or compulsory reformulation of food products, targeted restriction of nudging practiced by industry and retailers (e.g. advertisement, marketing, product placement) or the introduction of taxes or levies on sugar-sweetened beverages or obesogenic foods. Finally, the German Nutrition Society explicitly calls for abandoning sugar-sweetened beverages from specific settings, such as kindergartens and schools - an intervention that actively restricts choice. The coalition agreement of the current government is the first to envision such interventions (improved front-of-package labeling, a strategy for reformulation of food products as well as the nationwide implementation of the catering standards issued by the German Nutrition Society). Society should critically support their implementation.