Strategies to Reduce the Consumption of Foods and Drinks with High Sugar Content in the UK: A Rapid Review Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, I appreciate the opportunity to review your interesting manuscript.
I consider this a topic of great relevance and importance in our current society. A topic that is also very topical.
A review of the existing literature on the topic was conducted, ultimately selecting only 11 articles.
It highlights the United Kingdom's strategies to reduce sugar consumption. I believe this is a much-needed initiative. Review the existing scientific literature before implementing any changes or designing strategies for policies or health services.
The methodology is well described and organized.
I wish the authors had stated the limitations of their work as well as its strengths, as I believe there are many, and these should be reflected.
Thank you very much.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Comments

Dear authors, I appreciate the opportunity to review your interesting manuscript.
I consider this a topic of great relevance and importance in our current society. A topic that is also very topical.
A review of the existing literature on the topic was conducted, ultimately selecting only 11 articles.
It highlights the United Kingdom's strategies to reduce sugar consumption. I believe this is a much-needed initiative. Review the existing scientific literature before implementing any changes or designing strategies for policies or health services.
The methodology is well described and organized.
I wish the authors had stated the limitations of their work as well as its strengths, as I believe there are many, and these should be reflected.
Thank you very much.

 

Response

Many thanks for your positive response about the manuscript.

We have included these texts for the limitations of the study. Please see Lines 304 to 313 (texts in red).

This rapid review has some limitations. The studies included in the review differ in design and the sampled population, which made statistical analysis impossible and direct comparisons and conclusions difficult to draw across the extracted dataset. Although the diverse groups of participants (such as parents, children and general consumers) that took part in the studies provided valuable information and useful outcomes in each of the studies, further research is essential to measure the economic implications of the long-term sustainability of the strategies for reducing sugar intake. The limited number of eligible peer-reviewed primary studies (n=11) also suggests that sugar-intake-reduction interventions in grey literature and some unpublished studies could have been missed.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a well written manuscript and it is an interesting topic

Couple questions

1. Why a rapid review vs. a systematic or scoping?
2. Was this registered?  Is that required?

The authors use qualitative analysis (inductive thematic analysis) which is an interesting approach.  I think that is commendable.  

L31: shouldn't all types be listed after sugar (since sugar is more than just sucrose)

Tables: just an aesthetic comment, consider sizing columns different so words in the header boxes are wrapped into the next line

Author Response

Response

Many thanks for your positive feedback. We have addressed your comments as follow:

This is a well-written manuscript and it is an interesting topic. Many thanks for your kind comment.

Couple questions

1. Why a rapid review vs. a systematic or scoping? Thank you for this feedback. We have added some sentences to showcase the reason we used a rapid review approach. Please see Lines 323-328 in the manuscript.

Although there are not yet internationally accepted standards for conducting or reporting rapid reviews (King et al., 2022), but we have used the approaches for study identification, screening, inclusion, data extraction, and risk-of-bias assessment based on our experience with a previously published systematic review study (Ogundijo, Tas and Onarinde, 2021). A rapid review approach was used in this study to identify research needs around intervention for reducing sugar intake and to set the scene for our future intervention research on added sugar.

1. Was this registered?  Is that required? No, the review is not registered. This is because its scope is on consumer behaviour and policy areas, which may not be accepted for registration by Prospero, the International Platform of Registered Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocols (INPLASY), or Cochrane, which mainly register health-related studies.

The authors use qualitative analysis (inductive thematic analysis), which is an interesting approach.  I think that is commendable. Many thanks for acknowledging our efforts in the method we used to analyse the extracted data.

L31: shouldn't all types be listed after sugar (since sugar is more than just sucrose). Thank you for this suggestion; the phrase with ‘sucrose’ has been corrected, and ‘sugar’ has been used.

Tables: just an aesthetic comment, consider sizing columns differently so words in the header boxes are wrapped into the next line. Many thanks for this advice. The table has been amended, the column width has been adjusted, and the text has been wrapped to fit in the cells. Thank you.