Following tax on fizzy drinks, the government should aim to reduce sugar intake to just 5% of energy intake by using taxation and pressuring manufacturers to reformulate food and drink recipes.

Despite the success of the soft drinks industry level, its narrow scope nature means that calls for a more wide-reaching approach are gathering pace.

There are now calls for policymakers to consider applying a similar tax to other discretionary products that are key contributors to sugar intake, stating that one of the reasons for the unnecessarily high amounts of sugar in cakes, biscuits and chocolate, for example, is ‘largely driven by an excessive supply of sugar’.

A report in the WHO Bulletin, written by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, proposes trialling a tax along the lines of the soft drinks levy on a food category such as chocolate confectionery and updating nutrition labelling to include 'free sugars' over 'total sugars'.