Researchers have encouraged people to increase water intake and discourage sugary beverage consumption. The call follows an assessment of healthy beverage recommendations and dietary guidelines from 93 countries.

Adequate water intake is essential for human health and wellbeing. However, according to the research, the consumption of sugary beverages has risen across the globe. This has increased health issues such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and tooth decay.

The research

Virginia Tech researchers studied the comprehensiveness and clarity of healthy beverage guidelines for countries that enacted sugary beverage tax legislation from 2000 to 2023. They analysed the text and graphic recommendations in national dietary guidelines from various countries to see how they encourage people to replace sugary drinks with water.

According to the researchers, drinking healthy beverages instead of sugary drinks helps reduce the risk of obesity and other health problems. The researchers designed an innovative tool that assigns a healthy hydration recommendation score that governments can use to improve their message clarity, justification and specificity, and visual content to encourage healthier hydration.

Nicole Leary, the lead researcher, said, “It’s important for us to understand how sugary beverage tax legislation is aligned with national food-based dietary guidelines that promote water and other healthy beverages such as milk and 100 per cent juice.

“We looked at how robust dietary guidelines could complement other policy, system and environmental change strategies for governments to promote policy coherence and socially normalise water as the default healthy beverage.”

The results

Of the 93 countries that had targeted sugary beverage taxes in 2023, 58 countries had food-based dietary guidelines. After examining the data further, the researchers found that 48 countries had complementary messages that encouraged water and discouraged sugary beverages.

The researchers ranked the countries, using a healthy hydration recommendation score ranging from zero to 12. The score factored in message clarity, access, justification, actions, specificity, and visual content of the guidelines.

Bolivia, Peru, and Brunei scored the highest.

Recommendations

The researchers recommend that governments develop and promote strong, healthy hydration recommendations to reduce health risks for populations globally.

Additional recommendations included:

  • Drink at least eight glasses of water per day
  • Limit the intake of sugary beverages, including fizzy drinks, fruit drinks, energy drinks, and sports drinks
  • Enact taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and earmark the revenue for health-promotion programmes that encourage water consumption
  • Limit the intake of artificial and zero-calorie sweeteners

Kraak, an associate professor in human nutrition, foods, and exercise and the senior researcher on the paper, said, “We need to be actively promoting people drinking water at each meal. When governments develop policies, they should ensure that national dietary guidelines align with and support a national sugary beverage tax.”

He added, “Our study has important implications for United Nations organisations, including the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisations to provide countries support to develop culturally adapted, evidence-informed dietary guidelines that encourage healthy hydration, and normalise clean, safe, and free water as the beverage of choice.”

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