The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) launched, on Thursday 22 July a public consultation, open until 20 September, on an updated draft scientific opinion on the safety of dietary sugars. This provisional opinion is the result of an evaluation of more than 30,000 scientific publications by EFSA’s expert panel on nutrition.
According to this project, it is not possible to establish a safe level of dietary sugars (‘Tolerable Upper Intake Level’ (UL) for nutrients) below which consumption would not cause health problems. But it confirms, with associated degrees of certainty, various links between the consumption of different categories of sugars and the risk of developing chronic metabolic diseases and dental caries.
The draft opinion includes an EU-wide intake model to estimate dietary sugar consumption on a country-by-country basis and a more detailed table of the main food categories contributing to dietary sugar intake.
Five European countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway) had asked EFSA to update a 2010 assessment and to review more recent scientific literature on links between intake of sugars and various diseases, e.g. obesity, Type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, gout, dental caries.
To participate in the consultation: https://bit.ly/3ByNazW (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)