Analytical Report - Spring water drinks

Introduction

 Soft drinks have been popular for many years, originally as dilutable squashes, sweetened with sugar, but now the market includes ready-to-drink products with many using artificial sweeteners. This has, in the last few years, been enhanced by the advent of the new sweetener sucralose, which has a very similar taste profile to sugar. Most of the drinks like to claim that they are low calorie as well which means that they contain no added sugar, only intense sweeteners.

Marketing developments have also moved towards using ‘spring’ or ‘natural mineral’ water, despite that fact that much tap water is in fact obtained from springs. To reinforce the pure image of these products, they are usually clear and only slightly coloured. This generally means that they contain very small amounts of flavouring, often just a touch of ‘fruit extracts’ or even artificial flavouring.

Hampshire Scientific Services and Kent Scientific Services with four trading standards services including Kent conducted a sampling project to look at these products. The aim was to test the products for their levels of, sweeteners and preservatives to ensure they are within the maximum permitted levels, the levels of sugar and also to examine the product labels.

Seventy seven samples of spring water based soft drinks were submitted in total with 42 being submitted by Kent trading standards.

 

Summary of results

None of the samples contained undeclared or excessive amounts of sweeteners or preservatives. Thirty three of the samples were reported with labelling issues. Fifteen of these were samples taken by Kent which are being followed up via the manufacturer and their home authority trading standards service.

The labelling issues were

• the use of pictures of fruit to emphasise the flavour of the product, when in fact no fruit was present. In many cases ‘Natural flavours’ were used, but these were invariably at a very low concentration.

• Incorrect names of ingredients in the ingredient list

• Failure to declare vitamins and calcium in the nutrition label where a claim is made

• Details not being clearly legible

The samples were also tested for their sugar content. As 54 drinks (70%) of the sample contained sweetener, the levels of sugar were less than may otherwise have been the case.

The total sugar content range from ‘not detected’ to 17%, the average sugar being 2.7%

If the products were to be labelled under the FSA front of pack traffic light scheme for sugar content

• 53 would be low
• 12 would be medium
• 12 would be high

These results show that there are a range of sugar levels on the market for these types of products for consumers to select from. The traffic light scheme is voluntary so consumers will not see the lights on all products. Many manufactures and supermarkets do provide nutrition information on packs and these show the amount of sugar per 100ml and possibly the amount per serving e.g. per bottle.

Where sweeteners are used this must be declared with the name of the food. If sugar is added in addition to sweeteners then this must also be declared e.g. ‘Still Spring Water drink with lemon with sugar and sweetener’.

The Education (Nutritional Standards and Requirements for School Food) (England) Regulations 2007

The nutrition standards provide for two types of water drink

1. Water (unsweetened, unflavoured) still or carbonated.
2. Fruit or vegetable juice combined with water, where ≥ 50% fruit or vegetable juice

The products targeted in this project do not meet either of these descriptions. They are not pure water nor do they contain sufficient quantity of juice, rather they contain small amount of fruit juice and /or fruit flavourings.

July 2007