Understanding the life cycle sustainability ramifications of replacing added sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners

There is increasing concern regarding excessive consumption of added sugar in consumers’ diets, it being associated with several health issues, such as obesity, dental health and diabetes. As a result, there is increasing interest in the potential to replace added sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners (NNSs), such as sucralose, aspartame, or steviol glycosides. There is a rapidly growing body of evidence relating to health and safety of consuming NNSs. However, to date, there is relatively little research on the sustainability of using NNSs in place of added sugar in food or drink products, and more widely in whole dietary settings. It would be unfortunate to promote use of NNSs in place of added sugar for health reasons, only to cause added environmental, social or economic burdens as an unintended consequence. As part of the European Commission funded SWEET project, we have been trying to understand those sustainability ramifications. The work has faced a few challenges, namely i) a lack of LCA data for NNS, ii) lack of data relating to production of food products, and perhaps most importantly, iii) lack of hard data linking health and consumption. This presentation will introduce the work done as part of SWEET and talk through the challenges. Moreover, it will highlight that it is not NNSs we should be focusing on!

Speaker summary

James Suckling is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Surrey. James has background in technology development, having worked in R&D in Sharp Corporation for several years. Since 2014 he has used life cycle assessment to research the sustainability of a diverse range of subjects, including smartphones, smart energy systems, or even rearing insects for food. His current projects are sustainability of sweetener use in food and environmental impact of controlled environment agriculture for growing fast rotation coppice willow.