Editorial: mitigating the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages: the developing country perspective

The current, timely, issue of this journal comes at a time health professionals are reflecting on the costs of an apparent failure to halt the obesity epidemic and its consequences in developing countries and the benefits of interventions directed at combating obesity and its complications. This issue of Public Health Nutrition includes research done on sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption in a wide spectrum of countries including South Africa, China, Greece, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Poland and Spain. This research suggests that the majority of children in these countries do not meet the recommended intake of healthy beverages (plain water and milk) due to the fact that they are overconsuming sugar-sweetened and carbonated beverages.