Fast-food chain ditches sugar-laden soft drink

Sugar-laden Sprite will be scratched off the drinks menu at 21 McDonald's outlets in a bid to help curb diabetes.

In what is thought to be a world first for the fast-food chain, all its Counties-Manukau restaurants will sell only Sprite Zero, which contains artificial sweeteners.

Consuming regular soft drinks, sweetened by about 10 teaspoons of sugar per can, causes 40 preventable deaths a year in New Zealand from heart attacks and strokes, according to Auckland Medical School estimates.

The open-ended diet Sprite trial, which starts on December 6, has been organised under the Let's Beat Diabetes project of the Counties Manukau District Health Board.

"[It's] one of our hopes that it will prevent weight gain," said the project's medical director, diabetes specialist Dr Brandon Orr Walker. "We don't yet know that substitution of sugary drinks with diet drinks prevents weight gain; it flows from logic, but it's not proven."

Counties Manukau is an acknowledged leader in fighting type 2 diabetes, the obesity-linked epidemic that threatens to swamp the public health system.

Around 115,000 people have been diagnosed with the disease nationally and the number is expected to exceed 160,000 by 2021. Poorly managed diabetes leads to complications such as heart disease, blindness and lower-limb amputations.

One in six McDonald's customers buys Sprite. The trial will use Sprite Zero because the taste difference between the regular and diet versions is less than for some other soft drinks, including Coke, and since Sprite Zero is not yet available on tap at McDonald's.

Coca Cola Oceania regional corporate affairs manager Alison Sykora said the company had been "proactive" in participating in the trial, however it was "unlikely" that the trial would extend to Coke.

"We have already got Diet Coke, so there is a choice for people who want a diet option."

McDonald's spokeswoman Joanna Redfern-Hardisty said the chain joined the trial as part of its goal of improving the healthiness of its meals.

"If we get a really good [customer] response, it's something we would look at, how we can put it in a significant number of other restaurants. It's new territory."

Dr Orr Walker said one of the aims was to change people's habits. "This is an issue of making low and non-sugar drinks the easy option, making them the default option rather than being the namby-pamby option out there somewhere from left field."

Auckland Medical School researcher Professor Rod Jackson, who has urged hospitals and schools to replace sugary soft drinks with diet versions, said the trial was a step in the right direction.

Diabetes specialist Professor Jim Mann, of Otago University, said: "We have to applaud anything that reduces calorie intake."

But the human response could not be predicted: "People might feel self-righteous with diet Sprite and have a double ice-cream."

There is controversy about artificial sweeteners. Sprite Zero contains aspartame, acesulphame potassium and saccharin.

Dr Orr Walker said Sprite Zero was safe to drink, except for people with the rare metabolic disorder phenylketonuria, for whom aspartame was not a safe sugar substitute.

Soft drinks and sugar

* A can of regular soft drink contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar.

* Researchers estimate the amount we drink leads to 40 preventable deaths from heart attacks and strokes each year.