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Low-sugar alcoholic drinks mislead young women into thinking this

“These claims have the potential to impact diet and activity behaviors following consumption."

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Girls night out having drinks at the bar
(ESB Professional viva Shuttersstsock)

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

Low-sugar alcoholic drinks are luring young women into a false belief they also contain less booze, warns new research.

They are drawn to the “health halo” around the low-sugar products, say doctors, and end up believing they also contain less energy and are healthier overall than regular alcoholic drinks.

Young women are also less likely to say they would exercise more and start dieting if they regularly consumed the low-sugar drinks, according to the findings.

The study was carried out in Australia where one in five alcoholic drinks claim they do not contain much sugar.

The study’s authors said: “Such claims have the potential to create a ‘health halo,' misleading consumers to perceive products displaying them as healthier than other options, which may increase consumption.”

They added that there is no data on calorie differences between low-sugar and regular alcoholic drinks in Australia.

This would be hard to estimate reliably and there is no mandatory energy labelling in the country, they add.

They also say that any claim that alcoholic drinks which are lower in sugar or calories is problematic, since any amount of booze can be harmful to health.

For the study, 501 Australian women aged 18-35 took part in an online survey.

Half of the participants viewed images of products with a low sugar or related claim, and half viewed identical products with no claims.

Participants did this using six images of ready to drink (RTD) spirit drinks with mixer if they had consumed these in the past year, or cider drinks if they had consumed those in the past year.

Where participants had consumed both, they were randomly allocated to one or the other.

Participants ranked the drinks on a scale of one to seven for various measures including sugar levels, energy levels, overall health and suitability for weight management and a healthy diet.

While they were all told that all the products contained the same amount of alcohol, they ranked the drinks with low-sugar labels as healthier than those without.

There was no difference in how much people would feel drinking the beverage would make them feel socially accepted, how likely they would be to consume the products and how many servings they would consume in the next two weeks.

Crucially, people who drank the low-sugar drinks were less likely to plan on compensating for the calories by doing exercise or dieting.

Participants who viewed the no claim drinks were more likely to state that they would adjust their diet and activity habits to account for calories consumed in "regular" alcoholic drinks.

The authors added: “These claims have the potential to impact diet and activity behaviors following consumption.

“Our findings demonstrate that low sugar claims on alcohol products can be misleading and support policy options to prohibit such claims on alcohol products and/or counter their effects, for example via health warning labels and/or mandatory energy labelling.”

Alcohol is rich in energy and contain double the amount of energy in cakes and muffins.

Drinking too much can increase your risk of putting on too much weight and ending up with a deadly illness such as cancer or heart disease.

The findings, published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, are are due to be presented at the International Conference on Obesity in Melbourne later this month.

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