New Zealand health experts see endgame for soft drinks in Pacific

Small developing island states are leading the Pacific in combating one of the region's biggest public health threats -- sugary drinks -- but their developed neighbors need to do more to help them, a public health researcher said Thursday. Health experts from around the Pacific, as well as the United Kingdom and the United States, gathered in Auckland last week to discuss how to make the region "sugary drink free" by 2030 and break the sugar addiction that is bringing heart disease, diabetes, rotten teeth and other ailments like gout to Pacific communities. "We found that Pacific island nations are probably more advanced when it comes to soft drink regulations than we are in New Zealand," Dr Gerhard Sundborn, a honorary research fellow in epidemiology and biostatistics in the University of Auckland told Xinhua. Tokelau, a tiny nation of just 12 square kilometers, had banned the sale of sugary drinks on two of its three atolls since 2009, said Sundborn. Meanwhile, Samoa, French Polynesia, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Fiji had all at some stage introduced taxes -- ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent -- on soft drinks, he said The effects of the taxes on public health and soft drink consumption had not been evaluated, but a University of Auckland study this month had estimated that a 20-percent tax on sugary drinks in New Zealand could save 67 lives each year and raise 40 million NZ dollars (33.27 million U.S. dollars) to spend on public health programs. Sugary drinks were a huge threat to public health in the smaller Pacific islands where drinking tap water was "not an option." "You can't get drinking water fresh from the tap in some islands and it can be cheaper to buy a soft drink out of a fridge than it is to buy water," Sundborn said in a phone interview. "Islands in the Pacific region are more susceptible to unhealthy products and sugary drinks have been part of that. Companies have been known to dump products in the islands at a low cost if they can't sell them elsewhere," he said. "Their systems for health protection and advocacy are not quite so developed as ours." Sundborn and other health experts have formed an advocacy group called Fighting Sugar in Softdrinks (FIZZ) to end the sale of sugar-sweetened soft drinks, which they believe are addictive like cigarettes. FIZZ was using the same tactics devised by anti-tobacco campaigners in recent decades, which have led to the government officially aiming for a tobacco-free New Zealand by 2025. Their call for taxes on sugary drinks has drawn accusations that FIZZ is a political advocacy group, which Sundborn denies. "It's a public health advocacy group, not a political advocacy group," he said. "The wealth of evidence shows that sugary drinks are unhealthy for our communities and particularly for the young -- that justifies advocacy." Developed nations needed to draw up guidelines on the sale of unhealthy products to developing nations and international trade regulations should be redrawn to allow developing nations to refuse unhealthy products, said Sundborn. The group's other methods to curb consumption included working with industry to encourage manufacturers to bring out non-sugar alternative drinks and raising public awareness of the physical damage caused by sugar. "I think people know that sugar and sugary drinks are generally not good for you, but I don't think they really understand the harm they can do," he said.