South African Sugar Tax To Curb Shocking Sugar Levels

As South Africa’s Finance Minister proposes sugar tax in the latest Budget speech, UK organisation finds shocking amounts of sugar in café chains’ hot drinks.

Last month, the UK-based campaign group, ‘Action on Sugar’, conducted research on the amounts of sugar that high street cafe chains put in their hot drinks. Out of the 131 hot flavoured drinks that the group analysed, 98% were found to contain excessive levels of sugar while 35% were found to contain as much as, or even more than, 9 teaspoons per serving, the equivalent to that of a can of Coca-Cola.

The findings of ‘Action on Sugar’ were distributed just ahead of South African Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan’s, delivery of the 2016 Budget speech in mid-February. In the speech it was announced that, as of April 2017, a tax on sweetened sugar beverages (SSBs) will be levied. This proposed sugar tax “adding much-needed revenue to the National Treasury”, said the Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA) body. fin24 went on to say that it will also help curb the country’s growing rate of obesity, diabetes and stroke, by encouraging South Africans to become more health conscious by reassessing their lifestyle choices.

In the UK study, it showed that the drink with the third highest amount of sugar is a ‘Chai Latte Massimo’ from Costa Coffee with 20 teaspoons per serving while the ‘Chai Tea Latte Venti’ (extra-large) from Starbucks contains 13 teaspoons per serving, placing it 16^th on the list.  Both drinks exceed the recommended maximum daily intake of 7 teaspoons of sugar for adults and teenagers.

Popular high street chains in South Africa, namely Vida e Caffe and Seattle Coffee Company, pride themselves in their good quality, “espresso based coffee” (see their websites) and flavoured drinks. At both stores, customers add their own sugar to their purchased coffee-based drinks. These include drinks such as cappuccino, cafe latte, Americana, macchiato and flat white. Both companies also offer sweetened drinks.

“A tall size is about 354ml. There is about 230ml of steamed milk, two shots of espresso (60ml) and 60ml of hand-made butterscotch. It would be hard to estimate the exact quantity of sugar in that, since our butterscotch recipe uses cream, butter and sugar. …It contains no flavourants, colourants or preservatives.” – Taryn at Seattle on their most popular flavoured drink, the ‘Butterscotch Latte’.

As for hot chocolate, Seattle offers a healthier alternative called the ‘Malted Carob Steamer’: “The ingredients include barley malt, carob powder, fructose and vanilla. It is gluten-free, sucrose-free, caffeine-free and preservative-free.”  The amount of sugar used in the regular hot chocolates and mochas was not revealed, but it was expressed that the company had halved the amount of sugar used in their chocolate syrup in recent years.

According to the UK study, the average number of teaspoons of sugar in a chai latte is just more than 10 teaspoons, while the average hot chocolate and mocha contain 8 and 9 teaspoons respectively. Seattle said of their chai latte option, “We also offer a spiced chai steamer which is made with organic cape honey, instead of white sugar.”