[imagesource:woolworths]

It was only last week that South Africans had a confused chuckle over the ‘Life is better in SA‘ Checkers advert placed in UK and Australian media outlets. Predictable, Woolies decided to jump on the publicity bandwagon and in a cheeky tweet, insinuated that ex-pats were really missing the high-end retailer with their somewhat overpriced veggies. That’s all fine, they took swipe at Checkers and got their 15 minutes of free publicity. No harm in that.

Chuckles 😊 pic.twitter.com/YLbPZJl4Oe

— Woolworths SA (@WOOLWORTHS_SA) January 27, 2023

But here is something that Woolies might have missed. Businesstech recently released a report on the sugar contents of fizzy drinks in South Africa. Before we look at their results, here is some context.

The South African soft drink market is valued at R53 Billion, and with diabetes being the second leading cause of death in our country (after TB), we can understand the need for government to implement the controversial sugar tax.

Due to its popularity and the addictive nature and effects sugar has on individuals, fizzy drinks came under fire in South Africa with the implementation of the health promotion levy (HPL) in 2018.

The so-called sugar tax forced the industry to cut down on the amount of sugar that they put into their fizzy drinks and this did indeed have an effect as consumption of ‘diabetes in a bottle’ dropped by 28%.

With this in mind, BusinessTech did an analysis of 50 fizzy drinks, to see who the culprits were. You can have a look at the full list here, but it appears that the Woolies-branded soft drinks feature heavily in the top ten sugar-heavy drinks, with their Woolworths Passionade top of the list at 13.4g of sugar per 100 ml.

Surprisingly, the sugar king of fizzy drinks is Woolworths’ Passionade sparkling fruit drink, with 13.4g of sugar per 100 ml. This is then followed by Schweppes’ Dry Lemon, White Graptiser, Woolworths’ Ginger Beer, and Red Grapetiser in fifth. Each with 12.8, 12.5, and 12.3, respectively.

This is surprising to read, as drinks such as Grapetiser and Appletiser also have sugar levels much higher than even Red Bull.

Now, this does not mean we hate Woolies. Their grilled chicken is better than anything my missus can cremate in the oven. But perhaps they should remove the ‘sparkling fruit drink’ from their labelling, and rather call it ‘amputations in a snazzy bottle’.

[source:busstech&twitter]