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New Health & Nutrition Commitments by Europe’s soft drinks industry (UNESDA)

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Europe’s soft drinks industry (UNESDA) has publicly announced a new commitment to reduce average added sugars in its beverages by another 10% by 2025. 

 

The commitment includes the following points: 
 
  • SUGAR (New): Reduce average added sugars in soft drinks by another 10% between 2019 and 2025, across the EU-27 and the UK
  • ADVERTISING (Updated): No advertising and marketing of beverages to children under 13 years (12yrs previously) across all media; lower the audience threshold to 30% (35% previously) so that in practice fewer youngsters will be directly exposed to advertising for any soft drink

UNESDA also remains committed to intensifying its efforts in the coming years to ensure that its school commitments continue to be implemented across Europe. This includes NO sales and advertising of any soft drinks in EU primary schools; and offering ONLY no- and low-calorie soft drinks for sale in EU secondary schools and only in non-branded vending machines.
 
As a member of UNESDA, we fully support these health & nutrition commitments. Coca-Cola HBC CEO, Zoran Bogdanovic, said: “today’s announcement is another tangible demonstration of our support for the EU Commission’s objective of accelerating the transition to sustainable food systems.  We will continue to scale our efforts, recognizing that collective action is needed from all sectors in the food system to make a meaningful impact.”

Read the full press release of UNESDA here and learn more about it in the position paper here

 

UNESDA Soft Drinks Europe is the Brussels-based trade association representing the non-alcoholic beverages sector. The membership of UNESDA comprises 23 national associations across Europe as well as 9 corporate members, one of which is Coca-Cola HBC.