by Luke Hawker
‘Sugar Smart’ campaign reaches Leicester’s Haymarket shopping centre to raise awareness for healthy living.
The campaign encourages people to monitor their sugar intake from everyday foods and drinks by downloading the Sugar Smart Change4life App.
The App can currently be used on over 80,000 products and works by scanning the barcode of each item with your smartphone, it then tells you the sugar content in sugar cubes and grams.
Johnny Rouge, 37, manager at Sugar Smart, said: “We are in Leicester for two days to raise awareness for healthy eating, we have had a lot of interest from people including nutritionists and doctors, who love the app.
“There has been a lot of traffic in the shopping centre today and plenty of people have got involved, this issue affects everyone, it’s surprising how many people take note of the amount of sugar in something when it’s visually represented.”
The sugar smart app, launched on January 4, already has over a million users following on from alarming research by Public Health England.
Children aged between 4 and 10 consume over 5,500 sugar cubes per year (22kg) the average weight of a 5-year-old.
The recommended sugar intake is, 19g, (5 sugar cubes) for children aged 4 to 6,24g (6 sugar cubes) for children aged 7 to 10, and finally 30g (7 sugar cubes) for children aged 11 or older.
The amount of sugar we intake has been an issue for some time, and debated in government with the sugar tax suggestion, it has never been more important to monitor our sugar levels.
The app ‘Sugar Smart’ App is free to download from the App Store and Android App on Google play.
Leave a Reply