By Holly Williams
November 29, 2025 / CBS News
London — The U.K. is widening its fight against sugar by extending its sugary drinks levy to cover certain milk-based beverages, including milkshakes, flavored milks, sweetened yogurt drinks, chocolate milk and some coffees, the Department of Health and Social Care announced this week. Manufacturers and importers will have until January 2028 to comply.
Nutritionist Dr. Kawther Hashem, who campaigned for the original levy, said sugary drinks are a major driver of childhood hospital admissions in the U.K. “If you want to look at making a big impact on the population, well, where is it coming from? It was quite clear, the biggest contributor was soft drinks, so let’s start with soft drinks,” she told CBS News.
The levy, introduced in 2018, previously targeted sugary soft drinks and was set at up to about 30 cents per liter for drinks with high sugar content, depending on the amount of sugar per 100 milliliters. Rather than passing the charge to consumers, many manufacturers reformulated products to reduce sugar and avoid the tax. In the U.K., that has often meant replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, producing versions that taste similar to U.S. counterparts but contain far less sugar.
Under the extension, the government says the levy will continue to be charged to producers and importers — a mechanism that previously prompted companies to halve sugar in popular drinks to sidestep the charge. The previous levy applied at a sugar threshold of 5 grams per 100 milliliters; the new guidance will lower that threshold to 4.5 grams per 100 milliliters for the drinks now included.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge estimated in 2023 that the sugary drinks tax may have prevented more than 5,000 cases of obesity a year among 10- and 11-year-old girls alone. The government expects similar reformulation efforts after the extension.
American mother Jules Dunlop, who lives in the British countryside, said everyday products in the U.K. are generally lower in sugar than those she grew up with in the U.S. “If we’re comparing junk food to junk food, automatically in the U.K. you’re going to get a healthier version of what’s available to you in the United States,” she said, adding that she notices more energy and clearer skin since reducing sugar intake. On taste, Dunlop said she “would never know the difference” between some U.S. and U.K. versions of the same drink.
Some U.S. cities have their own sugar taxes, but without a national policy, manufacturers in the United States are less likely to reformulate products broadly. The U.K. extension is intended to build on the earlier levy’s public health impact by targeting additional categories that contribute to children’s sugar consumption.
