Rising temperatures increase added sugar intake disproportionately in disadvantaged groups in the USA

Pan He (), Zhuojing Xu, Duo Chan (), Pengfei Liu () and Yan Bai ()
Additional contact information
Pan He: Cardiff University
Zhuojing Xu: Zhejiang University
Duo Chan: University of Southampton
Pengfei Liu: The University of Rhode Island
Yan Bai: Zhejiang University

Nature Climate Change, 2025, vol. 15, issue 9, 963-970

Abstract: Abstract Extreme heat may affect added sugar consumption through the increased intake of drinks and frozen desserts, but such an impact is rarely quantified. Here, using individual transaction-level data for US households in 2004–2019, we find that added sugar consumption is positively related to temperature, notably within 12–30 °C at a rate of 0.70 g °C−1. This is primarily driven by the higher consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and frozen desserts. The magnitude of such impact is larger among households with lower income or educational levels. Our projections indicate a substantial nationwide increase in added sugar consumption of 2.99 g per day by 2095 (or equivalently 5 °C warming level), with vulnerable groups at an even higher risk. Our results highlight the critical need to mitigate health risks from the over-intake of added sugar and to explore dietary adaptation to climate change.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02398-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:15:y:2025:i:9:d:10.1038_s41558-025-02398-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02398-8

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().