Singapore will ban advertisements for high-sugar milk tea, coffee and juice next year!

Coffee and milk tea are essential products for workers. With the arrival of the Beginning of Autumn, businesses and consumers shouted to drink "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" and "the first cup of coffee in autumn". Singapore, on the other side of Southeast Asia, has issued a ban on advertising, such as milk tea, juice and other drinks.

On August 11, Singapore Health Minister Wang Yikang announced at the event that in order to further curb the development of diabetes, advertising of beverages high in sugar and trans fat will be banned from the end of 2023. Singapore's Ministry of Health will announce specific measures next year.

These drinks include drinks made at the coffee shop, Fresh Juice and milk tea. Singapore's Ministry of Health requires businesses to mark the nutritional levels of drinks with high sugar and trans fat content in physical or electronic menus.

According to a report in the Straits Times on December 30, 2021, the Ministry of Health in Singapore told the media that nutrition levels range from A to D, of which D is the most unhealthy of the four. Grade An and B are green, grade C is orange and grade D is red. For C and D grade beverages, their nutrition levels need to be clearly marked before they can be sold. In addition, merchants are prohibited from advertising D-grade drinks on any online and offline platform.

The measure will help consumers identify drinks that are high in sugar and saturated fat, allowing them to make healthier choices, reducing the impact of advertising on consumer preferences and promoting industry restructuring.

The green tea beverage in the following picture, for example, contains 5.8 grams of sugar per 100 ml, which is marked as Grade C, and the corresponding grade label can be seen on the outer package.

Wang Yikang added that the government is working hard to work out the details of the measures, which are expected to be announced in the middle of next year and come into effect by the end of next year.

The measure is an effort by the Singaporean government to influence consumers' diet and sugar intake to combat the country's high incidence of diabetes. More than 400000 people in Singapore have diabetes, equivalent to an average of one in nine Singaporeans. Diabetes is one of the main causes of kidney failure. Singapore has one of the highest rates of end-stage renal failure in the world.

Wang Yikang said that about six new patients in Singapore are diagnosed with kidney failure every day, compared with about four in 2011, which is mainly affected by the aging population and the prevalence of disease. In view of the aging population in Singapore, the number of patients with kidney disease is expected to increase further. Although the prevalence of diabetes has remained stable for many years, the prevalence of obesity has been on the rise (obesity is a cause of diabetes).

In order to curb the trend of diabetes, Singapore began to declare war on diabetes as early as 2016, introducing a variety of measures to limit people's sugar intake, and now it has gradually achieved results. According to an interview with some practitioners in the catering industry by the Straits Times, in the past three years, more and more consumers have attached importance to healthy choices, with 60% to 70% of consumers asking their coffee or tea to choose little or no sugar.

Photo source: Straits Times, Internet

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