Teens may be less likely to choose sugar-sweetened drinks such as soda if they see health warnings, according to a recent study.
The research was published online Sept. 8 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
States such as New York and cities such as Baltimore have proposed legislation to add health warning labels to sugar-sweetened beverages. However, there is little data on how such labels would affect consumers, said lead study author Christina Roberto, PhD, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Such beverages are the No. 1 source of added sugars in the diet and a risk factor for chronic conditions, such as obesity, she said.
“We’re at the point that a lot of people know drinks like Coca-Cola are bad for them, but there is a whole host of other beverages people don’t know are loaded with sugar, like Gatorade and Arizona Green Iced Tea,” Roberto told The Nation’s Health.
Because of a lack of consumer data, researchers recruited over 2,200 youth between ages 12 and 18 and asked them to pretend they were choosing a beverage from a vending machine based on 20 drink images on a computer screen. Twelve of them were sugar-sweetened.
Participants were organized into six groups. One included youth that saw beverages with no health warning labels. Another group viewed beverages that only had calorie labels.
Youth in the remaining four groups saw beverages in which the sugar-sweetened drinks had labels. One group saw a label with proposed language from California that said added sugar “contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.” The other three each saw labels with variations on the proposed California label, where “obesity” was changed to “weight gain,” “diabetes” to “Type 2 diabetes” and the words “preventable diseases like” added before “obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.”
Participants were also asked about their health status, such as whether they were overweight, were trying to lose or gain weight or had Type 2 diabetes.
Among youth that saw no warning label, 77 percent chose a sugar-sweetened drink. In the calorie label group, 72.5 percent of youth chose a sugar-sweetened drink.
But numbers were lower among youth who saw variations on the California warning. Only 61 percent of youth who saw the Type 2 diabetes warning chose a sugar-sweetened drink, followed by 63 percent for the preventable diseases warning and 64.5 percent for the weight gain warning. Sixty-nine percent of youth who saw the original California warning chose a sugary beverage.
Overweight participants who viewed the preventable diseases and weight gain labels were less likely to select sugar-sweetened drinks than participants who were not overweight but viewed the same ones, the study said.
Overall, 62.7 percent of participants said they favored a policy on sugar-sweetened beverage labels, the study said. And on average, a warning label would change their perception of how healthy a beverage is.
For more information, visit www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(16)30258-6/abstract.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
