Eating less sugar would be good for the planet as well as our health, say researchers

Sugar addiction is on the rise. Globally, sugar consumption has quadrupled over the past 60 years and now accounts for around 8% of all our calories.

It may seem like sugar nourishes us, but added sugars are actually empty calories: they lack nutrients like vitamins or fiber. The result is huge health costs, with sugars linked to obesity worldwide. Some estimates suggest that half of the world’s population could be obese by 2035.

It is estimated that a limited 20% reduction in sugar consumption would save $10.3 billion (£8.1 billion) in healthcare costs in the US alone. Yet the impacts of sugar go far beyond health and money.

Sugar farming also poses many environmental problems, such as loss of habitat and biodiversity and water pollution from fertilizers and factories. But overall, sugar hasn’t received much attention from the scientific community, despite being the largest crop grown by mass on the planet.

In a recent article, we assessed the environmental impacts of sugar and explored avenues for reducing sugar in the diet to recommended levels, either by reducing production or using the saved sugar in environmentally beneficial ways.

By phasing out sugar, we could save land that could be rewilded and store carbon. This is particularly important in biodiversity-rich tropical regions where sugar production is concentrated, such as Brazil and India. But a different, more politically acceptable option might be to redirect sugar from diets to other environmentally beneficial uses, such as bioplastics or biofuels.

Our study shows that the biggest opportunity lies in using sugar to feed the microbes that make proteins. Using the preserved sugar for this microbial protein could produce enough plant-based protein-rich food products to regularly feed 521 million people. And if it replaced animal protein, it could also have huge emissions and water benefits.

We estimate that if this protein replaced chicken, it could reduce emissions by almost 250 million tonnes, and we would achieve even greater savings by replacing beef (for reference, the UK’s national fossil fuel emissions United are approximately 300 million tonnes). Given that sugar has a much lower climate impact than meat, this makes perfect sense.

Another alternative is to use the reused sugar to produce bioplastics, which would replace about 20% of the total market for polyethylene, one of the most common forms of plastic and used to produce everything from packaging to pipes. Or to produce biofuels, producing around 198 million barrels of ethanol for transport.

Brazil already produces about 85% of the world’s ethanol and produces it from sugar, but instead of having to grow more sugar to produce ethanol, we could instead redirect sugar from food. This estimate is based on a world where dietary sugar would be reduced as much as possible in dietary recommendations (5% of daily calories). The benefits would be even greater if we reduced sugar consumption even further.

Supply chain challenges

This seems like a win-win: reducing sugar to reduce obesity and protect the environment. But these changes represent a huge challenge for a sugar supply chain that spans more than 100 countries and for the millions of people who depend on sugar income.

National policies such as sugar taxes are vital, but international coordination is also important in such a sprawling supply chain. Sustainable agriculture is being discussed this week at the UN climate summit, COP29, in Azerbaijan. Sustainable sugar production should be considered in these global negotiations, given the many environmental issues and opportunities to change the way we grow and consume sugar.

We also suggest that groups of countries could come together in sugar transition partnerships between producers and consumers that encourage the diversion of sugar from people’s diets to more beneficial uses. This could be coordinated by the World Health Organization, which has called for a reduction in sugar consumption. Some of the money to finance these efforts could even come from some of the savings made in national health budgets.

We cannot hope to change the way we produce and consume sugar overnight. But by exploring other uses for sugar, we can highlight the environmental benefits we’re missing and help policymakers chart a path forward for the industry in a resource-efficient way while improving public health.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.