World: Sugar reduction, three learnings from growth markets

Excessive sugar consumption is bad news for population health: it’s known to increase the risk of developing obesity and non-communicable diseases such as dental caries. Pressure to cut the sweet stuff from food and beverage formulations is at an all-time high, and not just in mature markets, with a long track-record of wealth and prosperity. Growth markets are also big into sugar reduction, but often in different ways to the rest of the world. We round-up three sugar reduction trends and strategies outside of Europe and North America. No two growth markets are the same. As such, the tools leveraged to reduce sugar reduction must be appropriate to the geography in question. A good example is China, which according to the Global Stevia Institute, is the leading producer of stevia globally. Stevia – a sweet sugar substitute around 50-300 times sweeter than sugar – comes from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plant. Originally native to South America, the plant has been grown in ...