Sugary drinks should have health warning labels: Study

You have seen health warnings on insecticides, other toxic products and cigarettes. What about sugary drinks that are reportedly leading to overweight and obese kids worldwide?

According to a professor of public health at University of Liverpool in Britain, there should be health warning labels on sugary drinks too.

"A recent BBC survey found that 60 percent of adults would support health warnings similar to those on cigarette packets on food packaging. Even more, 70 percent would support banning sugary drinks in schools, or limiting the amount of sugar allowed in certain foods," professor Simon Capewell stressed.

Sugar is "increasingly being implicated as a specific causal factor" for overweight, obesity and heart disease and "current obesity policies are failing to reverse obesity trends", he added.

He wondered whether calorie control strategies could learn from previous successful lessons in tobacco control and alcohol control.

"The state of California is already considering a new health bill that will see sugary drinks labelled with health warnings," he said.

Warning labels represent an "interesting natural experiment" that "may offer an effective new strategy to complement existing, potentially powerful interventions like marketing bans and sugary drinks duties", he noted in a paper published on bmj.com.