Swiss authorities and firms agree to cut sugar in cereals, yoghurts and drinks

The Milan Declaration is an initiative of the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office that was first drawn up in 2015 to reduce the sugar content in certain products. Keystone-SDA

Cereals, yoghurts and drinks in Switzerland will contain less sugar by 2028. The Swiss government and 21 companies renewed the so-called Milan Declaration in Bern on Thursday.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

New targets have been set under the initiative. The amount of sugar added to serums, breakfast cereals and milk-based drinks will have to be lowered by 10%. The same applies to soft drinks. The bar has been set at 5% for yoghurts.

The commitment to reducing sugar in foodstuffs was initiated ten years ago. In a press release on Thursday, the the interior ministry said it was pleased with progress.

Yoghurts, serums, milk drinks, breakfast cereals and soft drinks now contain significantly less sugar than they did ten years ago.

The ministry also wants to reach an agreement with the food industry to lower the salt content of processed foods. At present, only Aldi Switzerland is prepared to support this approach.

Translated from French by DeepL/sb

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]